REVISED PICS: Bicycles, Balance, and Bees (Oh my!) --The DRAMATIC Conclusion

As you have all deduced by now, the sound was emanating from this:

Using my most basic survival skills, I instinctively reached up to swat it once it started stinging me.  (ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!)

Which meant, I took my right hand off my handle bar.

This was a really bad idea because, in case you've forgotten, or you missed it, I was relatively new to biking and hadn't mastered the finer points, like steering, controlling speed, and probably *most* importantly, yup you guessed it: balancing.  With my right hand otherwise occupied, I forgot what to focus on and my bike veered *drastically* to the right while dropping into a severe lean to the left.

I may have muttered something quietly to myself.

I was rapidly closing in on Patty's back wheel (Welcome back, tunnel vision)

and I saw before me two possibilities:

OPTION A

Take no prisoners

OR


OPTION B

Sacrifice myself for the greater good.

In an effort to preserve Patty's well-being, I developed a brand-new maneuver (I'm all about being spontaneous).

Ladies and germs, I present:

THE DITCH

(*Professional ditch.  Not recommended without intense training...*trust* me.)

It was most definitely the longest 0.3 seconds of my life.  I was confident that I was going to:

Break a leg.

Break a wrist.

Break my face.

Not to mention, get such bad road rash that small children would run up to me to treat me like a human highway for their Tonka trucks.

Miraculously, my jacket provided protection from road rash. My wrists were sore and I did have some lovely bruises on my palms, arms and legs.  But, my bike took the brunt of the fall, and my handlebars had acquired some serious bent-out-of-shapeness.

Since we were unable to bend them back, I got on and biked the last 4 miles in a *slightly* modified pose.  We'll call it, the ditch deviation.

Dave was obviously glad I was ok, and was kind enough to fix the handlebars when we met him back at the car.

Lesson du jour:

NEXT POST


YOU KNEW IT WAS COMING: THE RETURN TO THE CYCLE CLASS