Okay, so the helmet was a really good idea…

End of the first week in November and the temperature is in the mid-sixties before noon. Not a cloud in the sky, quite reasonable wind, and I have some packages waiting at the PO. So I took the bike. And on the way back…

…this happened.

You might, at this point in the narrative, dear readers, be in need of further details. Well it’s like this: Uncle Joel’s lower left leg suffers from a medical condition known as “ain’t there.” This adds complications to bicycle-riding, among which: Sometimes on the downstroke my left foot slides off the pedal. This is common and normally manageable. But on this particular downstroke I was going slightly uphill and actually having to work the pedal so when my left foot slid off the pedal it did it with force sufficient to dislodge the prosthesis, which is only held on by the clever application of friction. Under certain circumstances it’s actually designed to come off – and having suffered serious knee injury many years ago when an earlier model didn’t, I approve of this. But in this case the prosthesis began to part company with me without permission, and I was concentrating on trying to get the damned foot back on the damned pedal before the leg actually fell off while at the same time lightly applying the brakes to lessen the oncoming injuries that were going to be caused by the increasingly-probable bike crash…

…the leg fell off, onto the road. And all still might have been – not well exactly, but not actually damaging – if it hadn’t fallen right into the path of the rear wheel.

Even before this I wasn’t 100% in control of the bike but that was the last straw. The rear wheel went into the air, the front wheel turned 90^o and I went ass over teakettle.

Happily I had reduced speed so even though I should have buckled the front rim with that trick, nothing on the bike seems to be damaged at all. Another few scratches. And since I was somewhat padded against the cool, and wearing gloves and a helmet, I wasn’t damaged at all. A bit shaken up, I do admit because the ground came at me with remarkable speed from a remarkable distance but the helmet took the blow and left me with nothing but a slight kink in my neck. The helmet’s not looking as nice as before but that’s okay.

And most happily, absolutely nobody drove by to see all this until I was back on two pins – I had to crawl several yards to recover the prosthesis – and the bike was back on its wheels. So all’s well, including what little dignity I keep around for old time’s sake.