Bad Juju

Yesterday, African Kelli took a pretty bad spill on her bike. (If you don't read Kelli's blog you should go over there right away. She is an awesome craftster, not to mention a darn fine human being. I don't know her personally, but I'm just sayin'.) Luckily nothing was seriously damaged. I thought to myself, "That sucks, I'm glad that'll never happen to me." Mostly this is because I probably will never ever achieve a speed even close to 19 miles per hour on my bike. Anyway, that was yesterday.

This morning I crashed my bike.

Wait - it gets better.

I had just left the house, and was walking my bike along side the back of the building when I happened to notice through the fence that I could see into the kitchen of a ground floor apartment of an adjacent building. (All of the little apartment buildings on my street are very small - 8, 10, 12 units max, and it seems like they all have different management.) So, being a curious (read: nosey) human being I started backing up so that I could get a better look. Why on earth I felt the need to look at the apartment I'll never know. Seriously, I just moved into this place not 2 months ago. I was backing up with the bike (remember, I am not actually on the bike but rather only walking next to it) and somehow, somehow I managed to trip over the wheel, or pedal, or maybe I had my own private earthquake, because the next thing I know it's all going down (literally) in slow motion and I end up on the ground.

I crashed my bike, walking, backwards.

Good think I had my helmet on already because I hit my head on the ground. Somehow, even though I landed on top of the bike, I ended up with a scraped up ankle, and a gouge in my knee, and I even managed to abrade my rear end through my jeans (without actually ripping the jeans). That's going to be one colorful bruise in a day or two, let me tell you. My poor bike, only 2 months old and already had a major (to me) trauma. I'm sure there must me something wrong with it, something loose or bent or broken clear off, but since I don't actually know anything about my bike I couldn't tell you. If my chain came off like Kelli's did, I would have been SOL. I so need one of those "bikes for dummies", or some other such nonsense, books. I made it to work ok, popped Tylanol all day, and limped home. I'm not sure if I'll be able to walk tomorrow though, I am so stiff already.

Oh, yeah, one other thing. This happened at 7:30 am outside a whole bunch of apartment buildings. I made a huge crashing noise when I hit the asphalt. And not one person came outside to see what had happened. I must have lay there, on top of the bike, for a good minute before getting up the energy to haul myself to my feet.

Thanks, neighbors!

So what's the cure for this? Knitting, of course. Am slogging away at the giant Mediterranean Lace shawl. I hope I will finish by the time I am, oh, let's say, 60. It's that daunting. It sill looks the same as it did yesterday, so no, there is no photo.

What there is a photo of is this beautiful little rose I bought at Whole Foods this weekend. I didn't dgo in there looking for plants, in fact I went in there looking for some Villa Italia's Italian Blood Orange Soda (I love the stuff - it's sweet and orangy without being too artificially sweet and orangy. It is also a rather cool shade of dark pink.) But the roses were only four dollars. How could I resist? There are not the tiny miniature blossoms, nor are they the giant double blooms or anything like that. They are regular old roses just small still. (Some variety called "Parade Rose", which apparently, unlicensed propogation of is strictly prohibited. Hey, it's my rose, I can do what I want with it, right? Not that I could actually successfully propogate it even if I wanted to.) And unlike every "miniature" rose I've ever had (and killed) they have a heavenly scent.


Just what I needed, another plant.

posted by Carrie @ 7:22 PM