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Ignoble End
I ride my bike nearly every day. I don’t ride nearly as far these days but I’d like to think quantity is its own quality. In terms of health and exercise, I think getting my heart rate up for a good 40 minutes each day is probably doing ok – or at least better than average. I fantasize about riding longer. I see folks on the U-tubes riding across the state or country and I think, “Why not me? Why not now?”
How about because it’s 5pm on a Sunday night and you’ve got work tomorrow?
Boo inner voice, BOO! Who asked you?
This morning I was pushing that 40 minutes to 140. I was miles from home on my trusty Corsa. I was rolling slowly around a tight corner bending to the right, up to an intersection looking to turn left. I had a clear view of cars approaching from the left, as they’d be essentially in front of me coming around the curve. I wasn’t expecting a car from the right (It was still early in the morning and I didn’t hear anything coming) but I still made the awkward look back over my shoulder as I cleared the corner.
It turns out there was a car coming but I was going slow so it was easy to stop.
What wasn’t so easy was getting my foot out of my pedal when I was already unbalanced, with the wheel turned, and looking awkwardly over my shoulder.
The world slowed down.
I calmly came to a realization: “You’re gonna fall, John. There’s nothing you can do about it now. Just own it.” There was no danger of being hit by the car – just the pavement. Just inside the intersection my bike came to a stop. I didn’t struggle. My bike just slowly tipped over on its side and I rode it down – not much different from how I’d ridden it for the last hour and a half. Riding a recumbent puts you lower to the ground so I didn’t have that far to fall, but even from a few feet it hurts to break your fall with your hip and shoulder on asphalt.
I looked up from the ground, probably grimacing a bit from the impact that was destined to leave a mark. The car was stopped twenty feet or so back. Neither of us was moving. I saw that both of us were grimacing but only one of us was conveying amusement.
I got out of my pedals, out from under my bike, and off the ground as gracefully as I could re: not gracefully at all and gave the driver the universal, “I’m ok” sign, thinking “I am ok, right?”
Other than a wicked bruise on my ass and a lingering bruise to my ego, I think I am.
And so ends my accident free streak.
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My Fingers Don’t Work Anymore
Although I’ve never been a great typist, my fingers rest as naturally on the home row as my head does a pillow. But lately typing is a never ending string of frustrations… a seeming combination of my fingers not following orders and the orders issued being flawed. I never get from capital letter to punctuation without a string of back-spaces and a correction. My pinkie reaches for delete/backspace more automatically now than my thumb does the spacebar, and it has A LOT further to travel.
The hypochondria in me says this has something to do with a diagnosis my doctor shared with me this month: Peripheral Neuropathy. For the moment it’s idiopathic. I say that because it is… I like to say it (the word)… and I rarely get to. The general anxiety disorder in me says it’s the years prematurely turning my mind to mush.
Roughly twelve years ago we moved. My job changed pretty significantly, involving A LOT more writing. You’d think with all the practice my fingers would get better on the keys but I think it’s been the opposite. I’ve dabbled with typing tutor programs (on my trusty Mac), taking a cue from one of Cheryl’s old teachers who used to say, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”
Maybe associating writing with work – exclusively – makes it more of a hasty chore and it therefore suffers. In the last twelve years I slowly stopped writing for pleasure, or if not pleasure (exactly) at least not for anything other than work.
Maybe that needs to change.
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Looking at old pictures on a Sunday afternoon
Some pictures from Honeymoon Island when the kids were young
