Goin' Down.

We're goin' over!

Yesterday I came out of a restaurant after lunch in DC and unlocked my bike (one of the 100 bikes that SmartBike.DC keeps scattered about the town for my use whenever the mood strikes me) to return to work. It was next to the curb, and the rear wheel slipped down the cement sidewall into the street. Then the front wheel slid down the curb. Next I started going over.

As I tried to keep the bike from clattering onto the street, I just followed it down into the roadway. Face down. In the gutter. At high noon in midtown. In my suit.

All energy being expended, motion ceased. There was no harm done to anything from the slow spastic fall.

I looked up from where I was flat on my face in the street, lying atop a candy-colored red and white SmartBike. If I was a younger version of myself, I would have sprung back up and cycled away before anyone noticed me. (Yeah, right, an anonymous noisy falling down in a busy street at noon.)

I stood up, brushed my hands off and righted my bike. Everyone on the sidewalk bustling by was ignoring me. I raised my arm, waved it and said loudly, "Don't worry, I'm alright everyone!"

A man crossing the street called out, "Are you all right?"

"Everything's fine except the pride," I said and he laughed.

I just hate it when those slow motion train wrecks get started.