There’s a hole in my knee. It’s my own fault and my stupidity. If I’d oiled my bike chain earlier then it probably wouldn’t have come off. If it hadn’t come off then I wouldn’t have slowed down to an almost stop, underestimated the height of the pavement, and hence fallen off.
My first concern was that I’d hit my face. After untangling myself from the bike, I cautiously touched my face. Although covered in grit I was intact. A white van slowed down to see if I needed help. I waved him on. I saw no point causing a fuss. I propped the bike against a lamppost. Her name is Matilda and she is pretty in purple. I replaced her chain.
It was only then I realised that the pair of black tights covered only one of my legs. On the other leg, the tights had miraculously changed texture, become almost crunchy at the torn edges. Blood was pouring down my leg from my knee to my boot.
I ruined a spare strap top that I kept in my bag by holding it tight against my knee, to stop the bleeding, whilst I called my boyfriend for help. Luckily, he was home. I told him I might need a very large plaster or maybe a few. He promptly jumped on his bike (unnamed) and came to my rescue.
Once the bleeding had slowed, I started walking up the hill home. I wheeled Matilda past a group of girls who didn’t seem to notice that I was oozing blood. Walking was slow. Without worrying too much I got back on my bike and started peddling. The knee continued bleeding but considerably slower than it had been. I promised myself if it got much worse I’d stop. What harm was there in losing a little blood if it meant I’d get home and could sort it out properly. I met the boyfriend on the cycle path and he agreed that cycling the last bit of the journey, washing and grit freeing my knee before sticking it back together would be a good idea. It was only another 5 minutes until we arrived home.
He also swore that before I got back on the bike again, I would have bought a helmet. He was true to his word and marched me to the bike shop. My helmet’s black with pink bits on it.
Seems like I’m taking a forced break from the training for cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats. Whilst everybody else wraps up in warm jumpers and trousers, I’ve been spending my week in short skirts and bare legs shivering. At least I’ve got my helmet now!
Do you cycle, and if so, do you wear a helmet?
Kate - Words jumble together trying to describe the object in question: she is clever, but not the cleverest; she is pretty, but not the prettiest; she can write a sentence, or even a thousand sentences strung together –but neither entirely concise nor clear; she is a scientist, inquisitive, precise; she is an artist, open, distracted. She is me.
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ABSOLUTELY. Oh my god, I’m going to sound like somebody’s mother here (I’m only 23, I swear), but I always go out of my way to wear a helmet.
On my 19th or 20th birthday, my parents drove up to Oregon from Colorado to celebrate my birthday with me. As a gift, they brought me my old Micro scooter (plain old metal thing with rollerblade wheels). Little did they know the rope holding the handlebars together had rotted and when I was rolling down a steep hill at 25 MPH, the handlebars came out and I fell backwards flat on the pavement. Split my skull (my hairdresser calls it my “scar spiderweb”) and had a nasty concussion. Couldn’t sleep right for days and had trouble remembering simple words and phrases.
Thank god that boy got you a helmet. I guess he is redeemed in my mind.
He is an excellent boy really, he’s just not particularly good at some of the traditional expectations of a boyfriend. He certainly cares for me and the safety of my head. The fall sounds terrible. I’m going to have to remember to check my scooter if it ever gets used again!