"It's about time for me to grow as everyone else does. I want to be a real person rather than a wooden boy."
- Pinnochio
I've spent a lot of time in political fora lately, and not here where I belong. But I at least owed you as much to tell you that I went flying off my bike today. Tried to turn in front of a car that was blocking the ramp to the curb and boom.
"Are you o.k.?"
"Yeahhh."
"Your quarter's over there."
"Thanks, I was looking for that."
I have been off of bikes for a number of years, but it all changed when I bought a beautiful, used mountain bike. 18 gears, shocks, lightweight; a completely different way of seeing the world than from the enclosed capsule of a car. It seems a lot higher off the ground than it used to, the pavement and skinned knees and cracked noggins much greaterer deterrents than in Gen X's heyday. The other day I walked through a bunch of BMX ramps in a forest and wondered if I could get the speed to go through them. Like Excitebike, rally-style racing, those kids have to be 90 lbs. or less I imagine, or the risk for broken limbs goes up exponentially.
Yeah, so I wondered what it'd be like to take a spill again. A very clean, quick test of body and mind. There was this full page ad I remember from school, "Your grandma wants you to grow a backbone." Kind of lame in comparison, thinking about what football players go through, or soldiers diving in dirt. Just skinned my hands and knees on concrete, no big deal. Lessons in all things.
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