Awhile back, on one of those bright and sunny Northern California days when the sea breeze blows gently through the Sacramento Valley, I decided to trade my daily walk in for a nice long, leisurely bike ride. I left my house around noon and was enjoying myself so much that an hour easily passed before it dawned on me that I had left home without eating lunch. So, feeling the need to put something in my stomach, and with a McDonald’s being the nearest fast-food place at that particular moment, I decided to ride on over and grab myself a couple of cheeseburgers.
To get to McDonalds, I had to peddle across a very busy street which turned out to be an adventure all in itself. The light that needed to turn green before I could cross absolutely refused to change, so I finally said the heck with it and decided to throw all caution to the wind and create my own route. I leaped out into the traffic, raced an old jalopy for the right to be the first one to wheel into the center of the intersection, and then smiled with childlike glee as I came to the sweet conclusion that I could still peddle a bike with the best of them.
Feeling full of myself and wondering why I had ever taken up driving a motorized vehicle when there were still Shogun 400’s to jockey, I spotted what appeared to be a tiny six-inch curb which stood between me and my final destination. I immediately decided to put an exclamation point on my exhilarating dash against authority (I couldn’t remember the last time I had purposely ran a red light) by doing something my sons and their friends have always been experts at – popping the front wheel of a bicycle.
“Popping”, according to my sons, is an integral part of any respectable young man’s bike-riding technique. It consists of simply speeding towards a curb – no matter how high – and at the very last second, violently yanking up on the front wheel, which allows one to “pop up” onto the sidewalk without having to slow down at all.
“This will be a piece of cake,” I whispered to myself as I began pumping my legs for all they were worth. Then, with the concrete curb finally only a few feet away, I confidently began yanking up on my steering wheel – and yanking – and yanking – and yanking! “Oh, crap,” I cried out as I suddenly realized that my ancient eyes had somehow drastically underestimated the actual height of the curb.
As I crashed with a big bang into the curb and began to majestically soar over my handlebars, time seemed to slow down to a snail’s pace. My slow-motion thoughts were numerous, but they all seemed to center around the fact that it was pretty much up to me as to what part of my body was going to hurt the most when I finally returned to earth. Should I try to use my hands and arms to break my fall, which would no doubt leave them scraped and bruised (if not broken), or should I try to twist my whole body sideways and attempt to absorb most of the blow with my torso? I could also attempt to complete a somersault of some kind and land on my back, but the more I thought about it, I would probably end up breaking my neck in the process. So, after quickly going through all my options, I decided it was probably best to just try and land on my side, which I somehow managed to do, although I ended up bouncing like a basketball on the rock-hard cement a couple of times in the scary process.
Unable to catch my breath at first, and sure that I had at least broken a couple of ribs, I suddenly felt a warm and very welcome hand on my shoulder as a concerned voice said, “Hey, dude, are you okay?”
When my eyes finally began to focus, it dawned on me that I had somehow come to rest near the wheels of a rusty old grocery cart – fully loaded with empty soda cans and an assortment of big stuffed black plastic bags – and its owner was the kind gentleman kneeling down next to me. “That was pretty cool, man,” he added with a friendly smile. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to fly right into my cart! Now would that have been something or what!”
I nodded and forced a half-smile as my new friend gently assisted me to my feet and I started to feel the pain from the assorted cuts and bruises on my right hand, arm and shoulder. He even dusted me off as best he could.
“You know,” said the kind man, whose clothes were even more torn and tattered than mine, “if I were you, I think I’d wear a helmet when you’re out here riding like that! It can be pretty dangerous out here on the streets.”