Had another bike mishap yesterday. I shy away from saying 'accident'; somehow, knowing you're going to go down in 3 seconds and you can do nothing about it doesn't fit the word 'accident'. 'Accident' seems to imply two parties, or one party (like a car) that receives irreparable damage from the second party (like a brick wall).
Darn, I guess I backed myself into a corner on that one.
It had been raining the night before. The sidewalks were still wet and slippery at 8:30 in the morning. I rode the route I always take to work - up on the sidewalk, across the UW Foundation parking lot, over and down the foot bridge - but I could also feel that my brake pads had finally worn smooth after a year. I made the first turn down the foot bridge with an impending sense of worry. No matter how I pulled on the handle bars, I was clipping along at the same increasing speed. I tried the second, sharper turn, but I knew I was going too fast. I crashed my front tire into the steel mesh of the railing.
Oops.
So there were two parties involved - me and the railing. But I had accepted my fate (of crashing) before it happened. Does that make a difference?
Acceptance turns a cold-blooded murder into a self-sacrifice, after all.
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