Halloween Scare

As my scarce blog posts indicate, life has been pretty busy lately. I have been working hard to adjust to my second job and apparent lack of free time. So when my mom asked me if she could come in town for Halloween weekend I looked forward to having an excuse to take some time off to hang out with family. When she arrived, she had brought a surprise early birthday present! A new bike!

We pulled it out of the car, but alas, we had no time to test ride because as soon as she arrived she had to come to work with me then joined me on a babysitting adventure, went with me to turn in a job application, took me shopping and for her birthday we spent an hour playing with clay on a wheel at Spark studios. Finally on Friday night we got all decked out for the monthly Midnight Mystery Ride (she was a gypsy and I was cookie monster) and I got to take my maiden voyage on my new (used) custom Cannondale road bike. You can check out a few sweet pics below:

Mom the gypsy and me as cookie monster.

A few of the riders including "Elliot" w/ET on the right :-)
Mom holding my old bike on the left and my new bike on the right

The ride was going gloriously… the weather was perfect, my mom was socializing with my friends, and there was a spark of excitement in the air. Bystanders cheered us on, gave us high fives, and honked their horns. Then, just as the ride was winding down, we passed by a group of drunken guys, one of which was standing in the street. As I approached him, he put up his hand for a high-five and I went for it. Before I knew it, he had grabbed a hold of my hand and I was thrown off of my bike. I heard him curse an apology before he faded into the crowd. I landed on my left side, sliding with my bike. Of course, the first time I fall of my bike, my mom is there to see it.

I had hit my elbow, head, hip, and both knees. I was not wearing a helmet but luckily I went down sideways and did not get knocked out. The funny part was that my guy friends adamantly wanted to know which guy had done it and were irritatedly pacing back and forth …dressed as a pregnant man and max from where the wild things are :-). But the last thing I wanted was for a fight to break out so I asked them to just keep going. My mom and I broke off from the group and went home to inventory and treat my injuries. And of course, I wanted to make sure my bike was okay ;-).

I got lucky that I did not break or tear anything… my biggest injury was a contusion on my right knee which is currently making it hard for me to walk, but I got an okay from the doctor. Looking back, I obviously should have been wearing a helmet, especially on an unfamiliar bike. And of course, even though I had done it three or four times already that night, I should not have of high fived that guy because he was waaaay too wobbly to be trusted and I was definitely too unsure on my new ride. Lesson learned. My punishment is that I cannot ride for at least a week and will not be able to participate in the Pedal Art Parade this weekend, but I consider myself very luck to walk away from this.