A few weeks ago I was sitting in the kitchen of a friend of mine in Seattle who has been a close witness for over two decades. A witness of numerous bike crashes, an instigator of at least two, maybe more, some of them are still being litigated.
We were laughing at the time we crashed on second avenue. Well, I was laughing, because I think that was the one I caused. At this point it does not matter. All of them rush together, none of them matter that much, we survived. The thing about bike crashes is that there is hardly anything between body and crash site. Unlike a car, when you crash a bike, your body hits a solid surface without an airbag or anything else to slow down the impending impact. Sometimes, if you are going fast enough, that impact can hurt. A lot.
Which brings me to this moment right now. I am preparing for a nice easy Saturday morning ride. It is cool outside, I may stay in and ride in my studio, I have an indoor bike set up there for winter training. It is my old Klein, its only duty now is indoor training. This bike has probably over twenty thousand road miles on it, all of them mine. It also has some crashes on it, also all of them mine.
As I was stretching I grabbed a pair of old riding shorts that have been with me for many years and I pulled them on and as I glanced in the mirror I could see a couple of ripped spots on the left hip. These were the shorts I was wearing when I crashed a few years ago and slid sideways down a hill, breaking a couple of ribs and road rashing my hip and upper left leg. As I was analyzing the shorts and realizing the permanence that the slide did to the material of the short I could see my skin underneath the rips and not a scar was there, nothing. I realized how nice it is to be able to heal and move on and walk away from all that damage. The shorts on the other hand, they will never recover.
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