Why you shouldn't bike in the rain.

I was saddened this friday by the news that, due to rain, the Critical Mass bike ride (which would've been my first) was going to be bumped to next week. Dejectedly, and without purpose, I set off to bike home, in the cold, indifferent rain.

I had done this many times before, even at night, without significant problem. Although on those dark+rainy='doubleplus scary' nights I would ride home, without a headlight, terrified, repeating the mantra, "...I'm gonna make it, they're just puddles, they're just puddles, no potholes, no potholes..." but the point is, until friday I've always made it home without major incident.

Not that I'm calling what happened a major incident, mind you.

But I fell, in a semi-spectacular way.

I was rounding a corner, in the parking lot of my apartment complex, when I began to slide. Slide in the sense of the Vin Diesel sliding a motorcycle on its side under a semi, sliding. It was exactly as the movies depicted it, except for the fact that I slid the whole of two feet, mostly on my ankle and handlebar, and somehow when it was done the first two toes of my left foot were jammed into the spokes of my front wheel and I was left with a bleeding (not too badly) ankle and a bruised knee. They never show Vin Diesel's toes stuck in a wheel. Bah.

For being shod in only flip-flops, the injury was surprisingly minor.

So, I walked Lucy, unharmed save for a misaligned front wheel and a badly misshapen right pedal, back to the apartment, where I had a good laugh about the whole situation over a glass of water and a handfull of Ibu and Aspirin.

[For posterity's sake, I reenacted the toe portion of the accident, the photo of which can be found below.]

Don't ask me how it happened, but that's how I found my foot.