So our little family has been having a difficult time lately, and I've been holding everyone and everything together pretty much by myself. As a result, I'd been neglecting myself physically. Very easy to spend what little spare time I have staring at a computer screen. I realized this yesterday and decided I must start each day with a long bike ride, as used to be my habit.
The town of Wherever, where I live, has a number of idiotic wooden bridges on the local foot- and bike paths. They aren't maintained--most of them have slumped or are not level with the sidewalk or have vegetation growing through them. I'm guessing someone in charge decided they were either cheaper than concrete or prettier to look at or both. They're also slippery when they're wet, and since many of them are built over swampy areas, they're wet a =lot=.
One of the bridges begins at the bottom of a very steep incline, and it rained last night. I saw that the bridge was wet, and I slowed way, way down because I =knew= it would be slippery. (I tried to stop, but couldn't because of the hill.) Even so, the bike went out from under me and spilled me across the bridge. My bike's front tire wedged under a wooden beam. I managed to get up and discovered my chin was bleeding freely. My right index finger was stiffening up. My left shoulder was abraded. And when I pulled my bike free of the bridge struts, the front tire refused to turn.
In a certain amount of pain, I carried the bike home (no easy feat, since it's uphill all the way) and felt my hand stiffening up even more. At home, I showered and tried to clean the cut under my chin. It had stopped bleeding but looked ugly. It didn't hurt that much, so I got dressed. Some time later, it reopened and bled copiously again. I checked it and realized it wasn't really a cut, but a good-sized gash. I would have to go to the hospital.
Yay.
I drove down to the ER, and a PA affirmed I needed stitches--five of them. She cleaned the wound and closed it, then had my finger x-rayed just in case. That showed nothing wrong, at least. Two and a half hours spent total. Not bad for a Sunday, I suppose, but it means I wasn't able to go grocery shopping, and when I got home, I just wasn't up for it.
Then I checked my bike. I couldn't get the brakes to unfreeze, so I drove down to the local repair shop. The repair guy took one look and shook his head. "The front fork is bent," he said.
A fair amount of checking with his suppliers turned up more bad news. See, my bike is tall, with a 27" frame, because that's the only size bike that'll accommodate my height comfortably. Unfortunately, it's also a rare size, and there were no replacement forks available anywhere. In other words, my bike was trashed.
Well, isn't that just great? I've had that particular bike for nearly twenty years. I =lived= on my bike all through college and well into my professional life. It's the only form of exercise besides martial that I actually enjoy, and is a major form of stress relief. Now that's been taken away right at a time I need it most.
I have to go to Ann Arbor tomorrow and there are two used bike shops there. I'll have to visit them and see what I can find. Maybe I'll look at it as a "With all the shit I've been through lately, I deserve a new bike."
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