The incessant rain over the past couple of weeks in and around NYC has done most of us no favors as far as bike riding is concerned. As such, I'd not had a chance to ride for exactly two weeks, my last ride being an altogether too brief one at Blue Mountain. So yesterday, after a hard rain in the morning, the sun came out and I decided that by hook or crook, I was going to riding, even if it's just a 15-mile ride on the road.
So, I went out and rode. I rode out to Orchard Beach, turned around and came home. What a great feeling to ride again! Two blocks from home, I typically ride through a parking lot, drop off that tiny curb and immediately do a medium steep climb to get one more burst before I coast home to chill out. I'd done it a dozen times before so what's the big deal. Well, the big deal was that I wiped out in the most specatular fashion coming off this curb. As I left the curb, I lifted my front wheel and probably lifted it unevenly. When I landed, my rear tire landed the right side causing me to lose my balance, tumble over and skid about 5 feet across the wet, hard asphalt. Knocked the wind out of me, and felt faint afterwards. I guess I'd landed my butt on my saddle, 'cause when I got up, I felt like I'd been abused with baseball bat. My right hip buzzed with a dull pain. My neck muscles on the left felt strained and sore. Bits of scrapes and bloody bits all over. Thank God for my helmet 'cause my melon took a nasty whack on the asphalt, too. And the best part was that I got this badass bruise on my right elbow the size of my palm - perfectly parallel lines of blood that quickly turned the whole patch purple. That was about the only thing that was remotely cool coming out of it.
Needless to say, I felt like a total retard. Again (re: see my stupid endo story in the Beginner's Corner). Much like that incident, it's one thing to get banged up on the trails doing something badass or something. It's another thing to ride on the wrong tires on wet roads after the rain and wipeout 'cause you're an idiot.
"I know a stupid curb drop that'll choke a donkey", I felt like saying. And I'm just the donkey to ass it up.
Anyway, one bent rear derailleur and one sore body later, I gotta get my bike and myself cleaned up. There's more riding to be done. And one of these days, I swear I'll actually 'earn' my bumps and bruises, not just get them as freebies through doing dumb things around town.
