It is officially Winter and for most of us, that means turning indoors for a few months. For me that means I have set my cycle up in my studio and I am now cycling inside. This is a good thing for me because after some terrible cycling accidents over the years I have a well earned paranoia against motorists of all kinds, but especially stupid people with cellphones.
Oh, don’t get me started with you texters and talkers. You know why the President of the United States has a limo? Because when he must take a call, which he often must, he can not be bothered to be a driver and a talker at the same time. The President is an important person. Most people are not the president, so their phone calls do not come from the 20-something pig-boy president of North Korea who now calls President Obama and says things like, “you order the shitty chicken with poke sauce?” The president takes these calls and it does not risk the life a cyclist because he is lounging in the back of a limo, which is how people should take a call if they must while on a roadway.
As a cyclist who must share the road with all sorts of bad drivers and moronic pedestrians, I consider myself hyperaware when I am riding, especially in cities. When you are riding fast in a city your brain must work overtime, just to process all the activities, people over there about to step off a curb, a young child eating an ice cream absentmindedly walking into a crosswalk, the taxi driver pulling away and asking “where to?” to his new fare and the delivery driver in the truck who could care less if he hits a cyclist. These and millions of others every single second are trying desperately to kill me. I swear they are. I have to process all of it or I am dead.
So moving my bike into my studio is a safe thing, no people, no cars, no careless haters trying to injure or kill me. Yesterday I was sweating up a storm, riding hard in a small gear, working my legs and listening to loud music plugged into my ears. I shifted into the hardest of all gears and stood up to power the bike and I felt the bike move a little bit, a slip here, a bit of movement there and the bike was sliding. This is a bad thing on a road, it is a terrible thing when a bike is on a metal stand in a studio. I wear bike tights, a t-shirt, bike cleats and nothing else when cycling indoors. No helmet and nothing to protect my body from a fall, because in all reality, I should not be falling while cycling indoors.
Yet, I fell. There is a table in my studio filled with paints, brushes and some small almost finished canvases. The left temple of my head hit the corner of that table. That hurt. Not nearly as much as my left hip, which took the full weight of my body and bike, as I slammed onto the hard wood floor. I heard something break and I was sure it was a bone, but instead, it was a wood handle on a paint brush hitting my hip. I laid there, still cleated into the bike, unable to move, wishing I could bring myself to cry, wishing I had worn some protection on my head, and my hip, ribs, knees and flooring. Slowly I uncleated and pulled my legs free from the cycle.
The bike was uninjured and I was able to get it back into the stand. I was, on the other hand, hobbled. Lucky for me, I have been injured often and I am prepared. I have a cane and bandages and sadly, plenty of pain medication. I took a long bath and some hydrocodone and slept the sleep of the drugged.
This morning I wobbled into my local grocery store, cane in my left hand, slowly making my way down the dairy aisle, in need of some Colby cheese for a lunch of turkey and Colby cheese on a corn tortilla. An elderly man was already standing in front of the selection of cheese and as I slowed, his head turned, a pair of broken wire rim glasses barely hanging on a wrinkled old nose and he eyed me with contempt, which surprised me. He too had a cane and before I knew it, he used his cane to tap mine, knocking it away from the floor and against the frozen food case. I had a quizzical look on my face, but said nothing, because I was in the process of catching myself before I fell into the Suzy Q Fat Free Desert Bombs.
“What the fuck?” I said and pushed my cane violently onto the floor to get my balance again.
“You don’t need that cane, you are mocking those of us injured in the war,” he said with an air of superiority that he either had not earned nor did he seem to understand. Again, he used his cane to swipe at mine, this time hitting it in the opposite direction, away from the frozen food refrigerator and into the open walkway. I was not expecting this and lucky for me, I did a Charlie Chaplin move, let it swing 360 degrees, it came right back down, stabilized me again and before I could ask the pesky veteran why he had such a bad attitude, I lifted my cane, smacked his cane from it’s perch and knocked it so he was now off balance.
“Touche,” he mumbled as he stumbled a bit, his slippers sliding on the linoleum floor as he almost lost his balance. He cane automatically lifting, climbing into the air and swiping towards my head, I leaned forward and it flashed past my head and around, knocking over some of Mrs. Butterworths Sticky Finger Fat Filled Strawberry Blimpy Food filled stuffy things. At that point I had control of my cane, smacking him in the knee. I could hear him scream out in pain, but not for long as his cane smacked me in the shoulder, hard.
“What the fuck old man,” I screamed, as I hit him again in the leg with my cane, as he was using his cane to pummel my right ear, which stung like you would not believe. I stood up straight, stepped back and held my cane up in a defensive motion. He slapped my cane with his, pushing it into the cheese section, “watch the Colby” I mumbled.
“Screw the Colby sissy boy, it’s on.” He hit my cane, pushing it away and he tried to stab me with his cane, but he was old and slow. As he tried to lunge into me, I grabbed his cane, pulled hard and he refused to let go, which was his big mistake. He was old and off balance, my cane pulling forced him onto the floor face first, laid out on the floor, his cane sliding out of his hand and splintering away from him across the floor as he moaned in pain. I stepped up to the cheese section, grabbed a small package of Colby and walked past him and out of the dairy section.
I think I learned an important lesson today at the grocery store. Cheese, no matter what sort or what brand, is almost always worth the battle.
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