I recently had my bike refurbished and was having a blast doing short rides in another nearby neighborhood. From my house to the other development had me going up our street, over on a mildly busy country road, and then into the loop. Once around and then back home was exactly a mile. How handy, right?
I had worked up to two miles and then one day, when trying to get off, my foot got caught on the bar. It was weird to be suspended there and unable lift my leg that one more half inch to free my foot. I used to be able to push off, swing my right leg back over the rear wheel, settle on the seat, then place my foot down on the pedal. The reverse of this enabled me to hop off. Smoothly, gracefully, and safely. Nope, can’t do that move anymore.
As I said, I got stuck. My new chain had stretched just a bit and fell off so I needed to dismount to fix it. And there was me, balanced with one foot sticking straight out in front of me and the other on the asphalt. I kept feeling like I was going to fall backward. Seconds stretch out when you are facing a possible serious injury. I focused all my will to stay upright telling myself several times, “You will NOT fall down!” I was really thinking it was going to happen…
Then I looked down and the weight of my head tipped the balance in my favor! I did a couple of hops back away from the bike and then had room to pull my foot the rest of the way off and down to the ground.
The takeaways from this incident are:
- I need to continue riding to help me with my balance.
- Although I can ride, I will need a step-through frame (aka: a girl’s bike).
- Riding will continue to rebuild the muscles in my legs after the knee surgery and it is not so boring!
- Riding alone is maybe not so smart. I need a friend to ride with. Just in case.
- I need to think about going to one of the walking/biking trails, after all, we have so many! Then, I won’t have to worry about giant tractors on the country roads and/or the pick up trucks that look like they guzzle steroids instead of gasoline. <—- click here
I will be riding again soon, but need to sell a few things to afford the new girly bike. Which leads into my next post on Swedish Death Cleaning…
Life on the Farmlet 
You can laugh now but it must have felt rather dangerous! Phew…
Annie, yes it did! I have pretty strong bones for my age, but I don’t think my spine would have fared so well… it has acquired some issues. 😛
I’m glad things worked out ok.
Anita, me too! I have had enough down time in the past two years. 😀
A girly bike would be much friendlier on mounting and dismounting so a good idea to save up for one of those.
I would like to ride a bike around my country roads but, to be honest, I feel vulnerable enough in a car as the roads are excessively narrow with few passing places and in the middle of livestock farming land so many tractors, lorries, muck spreaders etc. that swing round the bends taking up the whole road. The last time I properly rode a bike was on holiday somewhere in France where there were extensive cycle lanes which made it a pleasure rather than a peril.
Lynn, EXACTLY! Here, we’ve also had a massive population explosion in Madison County and housing is filling up our farmland so fast I can’t stand it! People from all over the US are moving here to find work and/or to escape the crazies that policies from their states have produced. I am hoping they don’t bring the crazy with them, but I’ve been seeing a few signs creeping in…
I always get a little irritated when I come across the phrase ‘Swedish death cleaning.’ For one thing, the phrase was created to sell books. It’s the brainchild of author Margareta Magnussen, who coined the term in her 2017 book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. For another, the kind of sorting and organizing she recommends was an integral part of my Swedish grandparents’ lives, and the lives of those who comprised the heavily- Swedish communities in which I grew up. I’ve actually written about Grandma’s form of the practice, but for her it was part of getting ready for the new year — it was a way of focusing on life, not death.
OK. Enough of that. I will say that the practice embedded itself in my own life, and if I had to make a forced choice between Magnussen and Marie Kondo, it would be Magnussen all the way!
I’m glad you escaped your bike, by the way. I’ve sometimes thought of getting one myself, but riding in my part of the world is best done by people with at least a bit of a death wish. Driving a car in our traffic is unnerving at best. When I watch people bicyling, I understand why so many put their bikes on car racks and drive out to the country!
“…riding in my part of the world is best done by people with at least a bit of a death wish.”
Linda, That is fast becoming an issue here as well. Huntsville and the city of Madison have EXPLODED due to the massive growth of industry here. Our little country roads now have traffic jams that go on for at least a mile or more. It makes me sad to hear the hum of the highway which is only a mile’s distance from us.
I had heard of Marie Kondo, but never read anything about her “style” of cleaning. I knew about SDC, but did not know about it being from a book. The Swedish Death Cleaning moniker came to me when I realized I was doing what Bob’s mother had done before she died. And, not to fear, I have no notion that I will be dying any time soon. Or I hope that is the case… it sometimes has a way of sneaking up on us. 😉
Bike paths seem like a really good idea to me until you are back to full strength. I got my feet stuck in my pedal cages once when I stopped in a queue of cars at a traffic light. I toppled slowly off into a large puddle. I didn’t look round to see how much the driver behind me was laughing.
Tom, I hope you didn’t get hurt! I get panicky with pedal cages. I have it in mind that very thing will happen to me and it’s almost a claustrophobic feeling.
You get used to them and I feel safe with them as they keep my feet from slipping off the pedals on a wet day.
I could feel every bit of your perilous scare on the bike. I’m so glad it didn’t end up much worse! GADS, something similar happened to me a few years ago when I was with my niece in Berlin. Many folks in larger cities in Germany walk or ride bike to the train station. I actually did fall off my bike into some shrubs and ripped the knee in my capris! Thankfully, only my niece observed this and we had a good laugh. I walked my bike (a man’s bike which was just a bit too tall) the rest of the way to the train station. That evening, the host family dad lowered the seat a bit for me to be more comfortable, but I still had the worry of straddling and stepping over that bar. We ended up walking to the train station most of the time.
OUCH! I have been shown a solution! Will write about it for tomorrow. 😀