When Bikers Learn to Fly

I have some bad news.  It turns out I'm old.  I know this may come as a shock to you, considering my bubbly and youthful personality.  But, I'm going to let you in on a little secret.  It's all a facade.  I've been faking it for a long time.  But now I'm ready to let the cat out of the bag:  I'm really old.

There are many little stories I could present as evidence of my elderly thesis.  Today I will present only one.  But be warned.  Blood was shed during the making of this story.  Lots and LOTS of blood.

It all started out pretty simple.  I went for a morning bike ride, which is something I do fairly often.  One might even use that fact as a data point to support the idea that I'm not old.  Well, read on to see why that assumption is false.

Like I said, I went for a morning bike ride.  I had a general idea of which direction I wanted to go, but the purpose was the ride more than the destination, so I wasn't paying too much attention to where I was headed.  I came upon a small park, and determined that it would be fun to go through the park.

Here's the part where I thought I was much younger than the reality.  You see, when I was a pre-teen, I rode my bike everywhere.  It was no big deal to ride across the grass.  It was no big deal to hop over a curb.  Then for some reason I stopped riding a bike.  Then 20 years passed.  That brings us to today.  Apparently, I was unaware that 20 years had passed.  Apparently, I thought that jumping a curb would be an easy thing.  (It was 20 years ago.)

So I headed for this park, with full knowledge of the fact that there was a tall curb in the way.  I approached the curb.  I jumped the bike.  And then I learned how to fly.

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong.  Did I jump too early?  Did I not jump high enough?  The specifics are fuzzy, but one thing is clear.  I definitely failed to jump the curb.  My front tire hit that curb and promptly stopped the bike.  However, my body did not stop moving.  (I blame Newton and his stupid, fat, first law of motion.)  And, as I stated before, Isaac Newton made me fly through the air.

You see, twenty years ago, when I tried the same thing it looked more like this:

I still flew, just without leaving the bike behind.  I didn't even need E.T. to make it happen.

So, as you can see, I'm clearly old.   But let's move on with the story.

The problem with flying is the fact that I can't fly.  What I really do is fall with style.

The main problem with falling, no matter how much style you may have, is that you eventually hit the ground.  Most people do fancy things when they hit the ground.  The really good ones do fancy rolls where their momentum continues and they don't get hurt.  Lesser people do such fancy things as catch themselves with their hands.  Me?  Well, I'm the fanciest of all.  I caught myself with my nose.

I do remember trying to put my arms in front of me.  I'm not sure where the failure was.  Perhaps, it was just in the gargantuan size of my nose.  All I know is that my nose absorbed 100% of the impact.  Everything else came out unscathed.

And that's when the blood started.

How is it that so much blood goes through the nose?  If you stabbed me in the heart, it would be more lethal than hitting my nose, but I am convinced it would not be nearly as bloody as a bloody nose.

At this point I had a problem.  Blood was pouring forth, and I didn't know what to do about it.  I hope blood is a good fertilizer because I sure fertilized the grass in that park.  After sitting and bleeding for a few minutes, I devised a strategy.  I figured if I just waited it out, one of two things would happen.  Either, it would clot eventually, or I would bleed to death.  I figured the likelihood of me bleeding to death was slim, so I waited for it to clot.

Fun fact:  I'm still alive, which means it eventually clotted.  Not only that, but despite all the blood that I left in the grass, there was not a single drop on my clothing.  It was all part of my brilliant lean forward and bleed on the grass strategy.

Once it stopped bleeding, I did my best to wipe off my nose and become at least somewhat presentable.  But, I utterly failed at that attempt.

The good news is, I wasn't planning to win a beauty contest on that ride anyway.

I rode home as a bloody mess, took a shower, washed all the blood away and went to work where I sadly reminisced about the days when riding a bike wasn't so gory.  You young whippersnappers don't know how good you have it.

That Time I Fell to my Death

I totally fell to my death the other day.  Other than the "to the death" part, that statement is totally accurate.  I fell down like a boss.  Also an accurate statement minus, "like a boss."

So here's the story.

I went to take out the recycling.  It doesn't seem like that difficult of a task, but I assure you it was.

My mission was simple.  I just had to make it from the porch (where I was standing when I took the picture) to the blue recycling can in the top right.

It didn't seem like a hard mission. But that's because I didn't know I would encounter the great terror of my life.

This may not look like a terror, but that's exactly why it was terrible.  It looks like a patch of sidewalk, but it's actually a patch of death.

I stepped on the patch of death and suddenly my legs were no longer underneath me.  My body instantly went from being vertical to being horizontal.  Apparently, my strategy for dealing with what I call "sudden horizontal syndrome" was to fling my arms out wildly.  The net result of this flinging was that I threw the can of recycling ten feet.

As my horizontal body fell to the ground, my head found a good landing spot, right on top of one of our little solar lights.  Luckily, the light crumpled before my head did.

The light lost, but my head didn't feel like a winner.

This is a diagram of the aftermath (click to enlarge).  The can is a good 15 feet from its former contents.

The good news is that I survived.  I just had to clean up a whole bunch of trash from our front yard and deal with a skinned knee.  The moral of the story is that no matter how safe it seems to take the recycling out, don't do it.  It's not safe.  At least it's not safe from November to February.

An Open Letter to Everyone Who Drives a Car

Dear Everyone,

We haven't talked in a while.  How have you been?  How's that thing you've been worried about?  I hope it's doing better.  How about that thing you're excited about?  Is it still making you happy?

Enough of the small talk.  The reason I've gathered you all here today is to discuss a little subject I call, "don't run into other cars while driving."

This seems like a pretty basic idea.  But, in my experience, there is some sort of amnesia that kicks in whenever it snows.  Apparently, people get up in the morning and see white stuff falling from the sky and think to themselves, "Am I supposed to run into other cars or not?  I can't remember."

You're not supposed to run into other cars.  Even if there is white stuff.

I'm glad we got that cleared up.

I think there may be some of you out there who actually know that you're not supposed to run into other cars, but you do it on accident.  I'd like to discuss some things with you.

There are lots of things we could talk about, such as, if your car starts to fishtail, you should turn the wheel into the fishtail.  That means the wheel should turn the same direction that the back of the car is drifting.  If you turn it the other way you will do what is called a donut.  This move is considered awesome if A)you are in an empty parking lot doing it on purpose or B) you are in an action movie and you are spinning around so that you can shoot the gas tank of a car that is chasing you and cause it to explode.  In all other situations, doing a donut is not awesome.

There are other techniques you can learn that are helpful for driving in the snow.  But the most important principle I'd like to go over is so simple that it can improve your snow driving instantly.  Are you ready for it?   It's going to blow your mind.  Here it comes.

Slow Down!

It blew your mind didn't it.  I marvel every time I drive on the freeway when it is snowing.  There are always people blowing past me at 80 mph.  They always have a smug look on their face as they blow past all the wimps who don't drive fast in snow.  Then I usually pass them a few minutes later as they sit on the side of the road after spinning out.

It should be understood, I like to drive fast.  I'm usually going a good 10 mph above the speed limit on the freeway in safe conditions.  But when conditions are not safe, is it really worth risking your life to get to work 5 minutes sooner?  (Not to mention that when you spin off the road it slows down traffic for the rest of us and we all get there 20 minutes later.)

This past weekend there was a bit of snow.  I've noticed that when it snows, it takes a few days for people to remember how to drive in it.  If it snows several days in a row, by the third day you don't see as many accidents.  But if it's dry for a week or two, when the snow returns it's as if they've never seen snow or driven in it before.

The following pictures are not from this past weekend.  It's from a couple months ago.  But I had to share what happens when people don't remember the age old wisdom of slowing down.

They closed 5 lanes of traffic on I15 for this little wreck.

Important safety tip: don't park a semi sideways on the freeway.  People may run into you.

I don't know what happened here, but I'm willing to be that semi was driving too fast.

For those of you who have been in wrecks recently, I do recognize that there are some accidents that happen through no fault of the driver.  You can be driving a speed that is safe for the conditions when the conditions suddenly change.  Perhaps that's what happened with our semi driver above.  My brother recently got in an accident that sounds like it was no one's fault, from his description.

I would just prefer that we all get to our destinations safely, whether there is white stuff on the road or not.  If you don't feel safe at the speed you are driving, don't feel ashamed to slow down.

Love,
Jeff

P.S. I ended with "love" so you know that everything I said was filled with love and you can't get offended at me for telling you to slow down.