So, yeah, my first bad fall. And of course it was my own stupidity that caused it-- I felt my CD player slipping out of my pocket and went to go grab it, while simultaneously hitting the brakes. Yeah, I'm slapping my head like Chris Farley right now. "Stupid!"

If I hadn't hit the brakes, I might have been able to keep my balance. If I had just stopped with two hands and let the damned thing fall out of my pocket, I would have been fine. I mean, it fell in the end anyway. But I'm suffering from period retardation, I guess, so I did the worst possible thing, and I ended up on the concrete.

I was going at least 10mph when I fell over. I'm not gonna lie: that shit hurts. It was my knee that took the brunt of the fall, and that's what hurt the most. So I'm lying there, clutching my knee and swearing like a sailor, and this jogger runs by. I assure her that I'm okay. (Of course, I have no idea if this is true. I hadn't tried to walk yet.) She moved my bike off the path and continued on her way.

Then I looked at my pants. I had just come from work and I was wearing my new work pants. The ones that I just bought yesterday because I finally could afford them. The ones I figured I might as well wear on my ride because they were covered with coffee and I'd have to wash them anyway. And I'm sure you know where this is going: they now have a hole in the knee. Fucking hell.

I was afraid to look, but I did anyway. I rolled up the leg and of course: huge hole in the knee. My actual knee. The flesh of my knee, sort of flapping there, blood positively pouring down my leg.

Ow?

I applied pressure with my bike glove. What else could I do? It's designed to mop up sweat and snot (this was actually the sales pitch I got when I bought them) so I figured blood was in that same general category.

Some guy walked by at this point, walking his dog. He's all, "Are you okay?" For some reason, the Starbucks smile appeared on my face and I answered cheerily "Yeah! Just waiting for the bleeding to stop!" He gave me this look like, "Oookaaay..." And kept walking. (I had my cell phone. If my kneecap was shattered or something, I'd call my roommates to come get me. But I knew it wasn't that bad.)

I waited for the bleeding to stop, or at least mostly stop, and I got up and limped over to my bike. The chain had fallen off, so I sort of put it back on. No idea what I'm doing. Probably it's all wrong. Then I got on the bike and started heading for home. There was no way I was going to walk two miles with my knee looking and feeling like it had been gnawed by a Rodent of Unusual Size.

And that's when I noticed my bike was really broken. Now, when I point the handlebars straight, the front wheel points off to the right at a jaunty 30 degree angle. Greeeat. So I overcompensated by pointing the handlebars 30 degrees to the left and biked the two miles home.

I guarantee I looked like a complete idiot. Hair flying out from under my helmet, the front wheel wobbling in this unsafe-looking way, my eyes all red, covered in grease and blood, and pointing the handlebars off to the side.

But I didn't care how stupid I looked or how painful my knee soon became: my bike is broken. My bike is broken, and I can't ride it now. And that's why I cried, cried, cried all the way home.

I took a shower and now I can better assess the damages.

1. Hole in my brand new work pants.

2. One beloved bicycle: thrashed.

3. Bruise appearing on my knee and turning horrible colors. Knee swelling in a fascinating way. Chunk of flesh missing.

4. Scraped elbow.

5. Dirt or grease or something embedded in my skin. Despite scrubbing in the shower, it's still there.

6. Bruise on my palm (incurred through a padded glove, very impressive). Also growing more disturbing looking by the moment.

7. Invisible cloud of self-pity hanging above me.

Part of my bicycle purchase deal is free tune-ups, so I'm going to do my damnedest to take it in this week. I am really hoping that a "tune-up" includes making sure the handlebars point straight and that the chain is on the right, um, gear thingy.

Oh, also, I hope they can fix my odometer-- I don't know what I did to it yesterday, but after I took the front wheel off my bike and put it back on again, the odometer is broken. (This is why I need a bike rack-- I hate taking the wheel off, I'm always afraid I'm going to put it back on wrong.) It sucked, because I really wanted to know how far and how fast I rode yesterday, since I went to a brand new place to ride.

Franka lent me a book of hers called Easy Biking in Northern California. It's got a whole bunch of information on easy, scenic rides throughout the area, so I went and tried one out. It's called Nimitz Way, I think, and it's on top of a mountain type thing. I drove my car up the mountain, parked, and then went riding around the top of this ridge. As it turns out, "easy" isn't always so easy. This was listed as "moderately" easy but it was mostly up and down and hilly.

I had to walk up a few of the hills. The downhill parts were way fun, though, especially since there were no cross-streets or traffic or anything. I bet I was going super fast. Whee!

I rounded one corner and right there in front of me was a gorgeous GIANT RED COW. Just sitting there right on the side of the road, a couple of feet away with no fence or anything, calmly chewing. After I gingerly passed the GIANT RED COW, I made another turn and found a GIANT BLACK COW completely blocking the path, mooing as if she was extremely pissed off. I turned around then, because the GIANT BLACK SURLY MOOING COW was scary.

And while I was biking through the cows, I could totally pretend I was in Holland. I just had to avoid looking off in the distance where I could see the Golden Gate bridge, and the Napa Valley, and the San Francisco Bay, and all that other beautiful stuff. Except why would I pretend to be in Holland when I could see all that?

Yeah. I want to go back to this Nimitz Way ride, and also try out some of the other rides in the book--like if Bruce comes next week for spring break, we want to go bike among the redwoods. But now, what with my R.O.U.S.-gnawed knee and my broken bike, I don't know how soon that's going to happen.

"For a long time, I thought my "happy ending" was going to involve finding Mr. Right, and getting a sparkly ring on my finger, and living happily ever after.

It's quite astonishing to realize that I don't need that in my happy ending. Because this is it. Meaningful praise from my teachers, wonderful friends who are proud of me, coming into my own artistically, being happy and independent-- it just doesn't get any better than this. "