I have been punished by a vengeful God for not making any resolutions on New Year's Eve.
Said deity gave me a good 54 hours before unleashing its wrath. Or maybe it was just waiting for the first decent opportunity to cause me injury. In any event, 10 minutes after getting on my bike for the first time this year, I came off of it again. Unfortunately, I did this with a minimum of grace and a generous amount of brute force.
I was riding along Canonbury Place when I spied a small green car stopped on a side street. I like to think of myself as a wily old cyclist. I'm fully aware that even if a fellow traveller has a human-shaped skull, it does not mean they have an actual functioning human brain inside of it. Accordingly, when I spied this car, I scooted back a bit on my seat, adjusted my hands on the brake levers, and moved slightly further out into the road to make myself more visible. The driver looked right at me. I made eye contact with her and then I did a foolish thing. I relaxed. It was plain that she had seen me, so I let my weight shift forward and I started pedalling again. The driver also did a very foolish thing and pulled out right in front of me.
I immediately hit the brakes. My front wheel gripped the ground admirably.
I am a weighty fellow, though, and this means I carry a fair amount of inertia with me when moving. This inertia caused the bike (and me) to rotate around the front wheel and slam into the ground. The rotation converted the vector of my inertia downward rather than forward. This prevented me from sliding into the car. However, it also meant that there was an awful lot of force directed at the paved street. Paved streets are unyielding things. One of the problems is that they are usually placed on the surface of a planet, and planets are big. In any war of inertia between a planet and one lone man and a bicycle, the planet is bound to be the favourite.
In retrospect, if I had been wearing one of those big padded fake sumo-wrestler suits, everything would have been fine. Instead, I opted to absorb the force of my epic battle with planet earth with my skeletal system, thus cracking one of my ribs.
I've been thinking about it for the last couple of days and I've decided I don't like having broken ribs. Thus from now on I resolve to make my new year's resolutions promptly. The first of these is to break no more ribs, perhaps by donning an enormous foam rubber suit if it looks like I am going to smack into a planet again. Admittedly, this may prove difficult under the circumstances, but resolutions aren't meant to be easy. Many people find it impossible to quit smoking, yet they resolve to do just that every year. So for my impossible resolution, I hereby resolve that the next time anyone with the brain of a ferret pulls out in front of me, I will attempt to find, rent, and put on a large sumo-wrestler costume before hitting the ground.
So sorry to hear of your pain! One would think that after making eye contact with you, she would have surmised that you would be travelling on ~ not the case I guess.
However, I'm sure you are medicating with large amounts of alcohol and your good wife is tending to your every needs.
Love,
YFA
W
ooh - nasty! You have my sympathies. How is the rib feeling now? Certainly makes you realize how often you want to laugh, breathe and sneeze.
Embarrassingly, my brother-in-law managed to crack one of my ribs at my wedding. I think I even have a photo of the moment... Right after the ceremony, he lifted me off the ground and gave me an enormous bear hug (and as he's 6'10", that meant it did resemble an actual bear hug). Thankfully I had only felt one rib snap. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened, and as you don't usually do anything for broken ribs other than tape 'em, I tried to shrug it off and ignore it. I would see a doc the next day. For now, more booze!
I managed to hide my embarrassing little injury from everyone that evening (free wine and excitement are great helpers) and didn't tell anyone until about a year later. When I eventually told my husband, I made him promise never to tell his brother, because it was an accident and I didn't want him to feel bad. Of course, the next time we saw him, Eric cheerily greeted his brother with a wallop and a resounding chorus of: "You broke my wife, you b***d". At that moment I wished we weren't in a very crowded, very public restaurant, as we did get some curious looks...