story 2

i feel slightly blessed because i crashed my bike a few days ago, and actually, it was my uncle's bike and i don't feel blessed because i didn't get hurt, although that was fortunate, but i feel blessed because my crash was the result of this series of amazing and improbable events. it was like the least possible outcome was the one that happened and it was awesome in the literal sense of the word awesome.

so anyway, i can ride a bike just fine generally and i would go so far as to call it my primary mode of transportation, at least around portland, but i was up in seattle for a few days with my cousin and we wanted to go for a bike ride, but my uncle had a new u-lock that we mounted to the seat tube of his bike frame before we left and that piece of information might seem trivial, but it is essential to the story and file it away as the first factor that made this crash so improbable. there was a cable lock on the frame, but we took it off and mounted this u-lock.

so we rode around seattle and sat in a park for a little while and then went down to this folklife festival with the standard menagerie of craft tents and food vendors and excuse me if i wax a little cynical, but there is something about a subset of festival-goers, the homeless-by-choice kids my age, that puts me off, like i understand the disgust with modern society and all, but isn't there an inherent selfishness in removing yourself from it? like you're part of this society whether you like it or not and if you think it is sick, how are you not going to try to make it well?

phew. but anyway, so we were riding home, me and caley, and we were on this bike trail that was built on an old railroad and i think it was called the burt gilman, or something, but i was following caley along the trail and he passed this guy towing his child by bike in one of those pods and this is where things start to get improbable. because a little earlier i was thinking "i haven't crashed my bike in a while" and also (and don't take this the wrong way, but) "i kind of like crashing my bike and i kind of like being hurt physically, not the act of getting hurt, but being hurt is like 'wow, my body is working to heal itself and what an amazing thing we are as humans that we can put ourselves back together' and also there is an immediacy to being hurt that forces you to be present in the moment and it isn't like i like the pain, i guess it is more that feeling of being where you are and when you are and what you are, right?"

but the u-lock hopped out of it's mount when i hit this potholed section of asphalt and i was right beside the man with the pod-child and i felt it or heard it or saw it dislodge so i braked super hard and locked my wheels, which is usually fine except the lock tumbled its way under my rear tire, so i was skidding along with my front tire on the ground and rear tire on the lock and it didn't take long for the asphalt to scrape through the plastic of the lock and down to the metal and so this scene was accompanied by this hellish screeching sound of metal scraping across asphalt. 

and the only reason i bring up the man with the pod-child is that i think it is a funny image and also because i only rode over the potholes because i had to pass pod-child man (and to his credit, he was very concerned with my well-being when he could have been upset that i had endangered his pod-child.)

now i want to stop and consider, briefly, how unlikely it is that a cartwheeling u-lock, that was at times yards away from me and my bike, could make its way under my rear tire. of all the possible outcomes, how unlikely is the one that happened? 

but the front tire was braking just fine still, the only issue was that now the back tire wasn't slowing down, and it wasn't like i had been riding that fast, maybe 15-20 miles per hour, but i barreled along for a good five seconds, enough time to allow everyone in the vicinity to wonder what horrible banshee was approaching and watch as my rear wheel swung to my right and slowly began to overtake my front wheel and i stayed upright until my bike was just about perpendicular to the direction it was traveling, at which point my bicycle, the object in motion, decided that the friction from traveling sideways, the unbalanced force, was acting on it enough to keep it from tending to stay in motion with the same speed and direction. and that is newton's first law.

so anyway i learned a valuable lesson as i skidded along the pavement and not about elementary physics, but now i forget what it is. maybe there are things that happen that we shouldn't try to assign a reason to.