In which the CoolBoy did something uncool

For my first real post, I think I'll put something down about my recent bike indecent which occurred on June 1st.

Firstly, my bike (I'm still working on a name, but Black Beauty has potential) looks like this:

(Thanks to rscycle.com for the pic)

Isn't she hot? She's also a fixed-gear, meaning that the pedals and the rear wheel always move together. No coasting. I've installed a rear brake (which is sort of against the "track bike rules", but whatever) for safety reasons, but I mostly just push/pull against the pedals backwards to slow down and stop.

Anyway, I was at about mile 3 on a ride down the P-Towne River Trail going about 20mph around a bend, when a young girl of about 10 came out from behind the trees on my side of the path. Most unfortunately, her 2 sisters, brother, and parents were all on the left side of the path behind her presenting me with the following choice:

1) Hit little girl with bike - This would probably kill her (not to mention untold damage to Black Beauty).
2) Go off the trail to the right, into the very narrow space along the concrete barrier that separated us from the road - In a word, this would probably suck.

So I did the chivalrous thing and chose #2. After several feet of rubbing my arm and leg on the wall, it became apparent to me the BB was about to go over. Being that I would fall onto a row of those lovely, processed, garden-type rocks with the gleaming razor-edges I decided to grab onto the wall instead, leaving BB to flip over on her own. I then announced I was alright (her Dad sounded very worried and apologetic), surveyed the damage (scrapes and minimal blood), and jumped back on for another 8 miles.

I then got home and took an actual look at the situation. It wasn't good. Long story short, my good friend R--- had to come over and clean me up because it hurt too much to do it myself. Not to mention we don't even have band-aids in my apartment. And I was tired of going to the doctor after the whole Mono+Strep episode of April '09.

End result

And a couple days of staying home and playing video games later (I consider injury and illness a good enough reasons to play video games) I got another couple shots of it.

And

Things are actually going pretty well now though. My arm's almost healed up and the burn on my leg hasn't ever really been a problem. The my ring finger suffered a setback with an infection that had to be removed, but other than that everything's okay. That and bandages are really expensive. So lame. But I'm finally going back to work, so that's also a plus.