I couldn’t bring myself to sell my bicycle. I smashed it up and decided to buy myself another one for my birthday. I took it up the street to sell to the repair shop but one look at the sad bikes for sale out front changed my mind. The thought of some local skid riding my bike of eight years made me cringe. “I can’t quit you now, bicycle,” I declared. “We’ve had some tough times, and we’ve hurt each other really bad, and you’re really not worth it, but it’s not over between us yet.” Damn this sentimentalist gene of mine.
How did I smash it up, you may ask yourself? Fool that I am, I decided to take a shortcut. There I was, riding downhill eastbound on the Sterling Road bridge where College and Dundas diverge and there was nary a car in sight. The voice in my head piped up: Turn left. I should have heeded the advice of my best friend, Buck Stiles*, who once told me the only shortcut was failure. No, turn left, the voice repeated. So I did.
The road was bumpy, friends. My inner voice kept rooting for me: You can do it! You’re doing it! You’re … Streetcar tracks. Watch out. Oh my … GOD! Moments later, I found myself splayed grotesquely across the divergence like some Grade 10 Biology fetal pig. A do-gooder on a bicycle behind me asked me if I was okay. “I’m fine, thanks,” I sang in the cheeriest Sally Sunshine voice I could muster as I picked myself up and hobbled over to my bicycle. I set it aright and pushed but it wouldn’t move. A car approached and I scuttled to safety, endowed with the onerous tasks of carrying my bike while ensuring blood from my wounded elbow didn’t stain my sooty shirt.
I was more embarrassed than anything. I have no mechanical-savvy whatsoever and I was dismayed to discover that human touch does nothing to repair busted front brakes. I was angry and decided my vehicle needed to be punished. I locked it to the nearest post—that’ll learn ya—and continued on my way bruised, battered and filthy. I willed someone to steal it. No one did. When I went back for my bicycle days later, I found it waiting ever faithfully in the rain. Brenda Lee sang on a loop in my head as I treated us to a cab ride home.
A sensible person would have gone home the night of the accident but I had a party to go to. A gal committed is not a gal easily deterred.
So what did I learn from this experience other than that I have the stamina of a goat? Did the universe succeed in teaching me that risks only half-taken are self-destructive? Did my accident teach me humility and force me to realize I am vulnerable after all? In the words of Al McKinley, “The person who will get hurt the most should take the most care,” and I’m going to stay the eff off those g--d--streetcar tracks if it’s the last thing I do.
*Buck Stiles = alias
