lifestyle

Pride comes before a fall

I ride bikes a lot, and I love it.  I ride in all conditions, in all places, for all sorts of reasons.  I consider myself a fast rider, but a safe one.  I have never sustained life threatening injuries from a crash and I have never lost a limb or even a finger after falling.  In fact I could probably count on my 10 intact fingers the number of times that my delicate skin has accidentally come into contact with the ground as a result of cycling.  I am proud of my ability to stay upright no matter what goes on around me.

Pride comes before a fall.

This morning, not 200m from my front door, I crashed my road bike.  It was due to a mechanical failure that was entirely my fault.  There was no one else involved - just me, a t-intersection and the asphalt road.  That is, unless you count the school kids in the tennis court at the intersection who would have appreciated the unusual sight of a flying lycra clad Australian.

I have lost a little skin and my hip is kind of wonky, but the biggest injury was to my pride.  Imagine crashing on a flat road at slow speed, all by myself, because I didn’t fix my bike properly and imagine doing it in front of a receptive audience of school kids. 

There are a number of different ways to view my situation, and here are a few:

1. A pessimist would remember that cycling is dangerous and a person like me should not be taking risks like this.
2. A psychologist might tell me that my subconscious mind is sabotaging my attempts to reach a long term running goal tomorrow, so that I am not exposed to the potential for failure.
3. A Mechanic would tell me that I am better off leaving the maintenance of my bike (something that I love) to the professionals.
4. A Japanese person would just walk on by and try to not contribute to my shame.
5. An Australian person would probably mock me or kick me when I was down.
6. An optimist would be excited to survive another statistically probably accident.  He would love riding away from the scene without serious injury and would probably be taking careful note of how to minimize the chances of this happening again.

In reality I scrolled through bits of all of these responses, one after the other as I lay on the ground trying to catch my breath.  Pretty quickly, though, I rested on number 6 and that is where I stayed.  My habit is to view things optimistically, and within minutes of hitting the ground, I was already excited about how little my bike and my body were damaged.  I had diagnosed what caused the fall and how to avoid it.  I had gone over the situation in my mind in order to remember the details.  As I knew that within a half hour I would be riding through the hills with my team mates and all that would remain of the embarrassing moment would be some discomfort, a couple of lessons and a funny story to share with my friends.

My elbow will be healed within the week.  My hip, I hope will be back to normal in a day or two.  My self esteem is already repaired and all that is left is a memory.  This is the sort of accident that I like. 

Thanks

Tom