The bike, the betrayal, and the aftermath

There are some advantages to using a bike, rather than a car, as one's primary means of transportation. Unfortunately, few of them bring immediate gratification. While I'm sure that getting my heart rate up while I ride up the hill to work is good for me, I'd punch anyone who told me that on the way up. Likewise, while my carbon footprint is no doubt smaller now than it ever was when I lived in the U.S., I find that fact to be small consolation on the days when it's raining or cold. Or cold and raining.

I'm not really being fair. For the most part I like the bike. I think of it as sort of a friend. It's not in that good of shape, and neither am I. And yet, together we manage to get around Jena pretty well, thank-you-very-much. There was the tire incident, and the fact that it sometimes refuses to change gears (or changes gears without being asked), but all in all we had managed to get around largely without incident.

Here it is - this is at my apartment, where it sleeps at night with the other bikes.

Anyway, you can perhaps understand why I felt so surprised on Thursday when I was betrayed by the bike. And physics. We were going to the public swimming pool down the dirt road driveway. I tried to stop suddenly, and the bike skidded out from under me and to the side. I hit the ground dramatically (according to Kristina - it's hard for me to imagine how it looked from the outside). I was wearing my bike helmet because my head is precious to me, but I didn't actually hit my head. I'm not hurt very much at all, actually, but I was a little bruised and bloody. Fortunately, I took pictures. First, my arm. It's totally underwhelming, but it did kinda hurt.


But the really dramatic thing was my knee. Knowing me you can probably imagine that I've showed it to every single person I've spoken to since Thursday afternoon. Here's a picture from Thursday evening (taken with the laptop computer).


But the nice thing about bruises is that they can get more impressive with time. So now it hurts less, but my knee currently looks like this:

Pretty impressive, huh? The only disappointing thing is that it's been too cold to wear shorts recently, so I have to keep pulling up my jeans leg to show people.

Anyway, I also have an excuse not to go back to power yoga for a couple more days, since it hurts to kneel. My bike and I are speaking again, but it's with the exaggerated politeness that usually follows a fight. "Oh" I say "let's go around this corner slowly. I don't want to put too much pressure on you." I'm sure that eventually things will get back to normal, and I'll be swearing at it for refusing to switch to an easier gear so that I don't start rolling backwards down the hill to work. But for now, the bike and I are sort of tentative around each other, feeling out the new conditions of our relationship.