Growing up, I was one of those people that never cursed. My high school friends used to tease me for my darns, shoots, and dang its, and for having such a clean mouth. Sometime between high school and leaving college, I acquired a slightly fouler mouth. Now, I definitely do not have one of those mouths where every other word is a four-letter one, but I let a swear word slip in on a fairly regular basis. (Especially when driving — have you seen the insane drivers in this city?) Still, I maintain some sense of decency, and I watch what I say when I’m in the company of friends’ parents, children, bosses, elders, etc. Keep that in mind as I present the following story…
Yesterday I went bike riding with Nacho. It was my first ride with the new clipless pedals and shoes that I got for Christmas. Now, they are called “clipless” pedals, but you actually do clip into them. There is a piece of plastic on the ball of the shoe that fits into the pedal, and you unclip your shoe by twisting your heel outward. I practiced a bit on Saturday just to get the hang of clipping in and clipping out, and thought I had it down. But about 20 miles into our 30 mile ride — after successfully clipping in and out multiple times, I might add — I slowed too much before trying to get my foot out. The motion of unclipping my foot combined with my slow speed threw me off balance, and I fell over to the left side with my right foot still in the pedal, right in the middle of the turn lane. Fortunately, there wasn’t a car around, but I felt pretty dumb.
We continued down the road until Nacho turned into Bay Area Park. There was an ice cream truck, so he decided that we should get some ice cream. As I slowed down, I was thinking “get foot out, get foot out, don’t fall again.” Somehow the first fall didn’t successfully ingrain the message in my head, and as I teetered toward the ice cream truck, I felt myself starting to fall over again, to the right this time. (Now my scratched pedals match at least.) As I was falling, I thought “oh no, I’m going to do it again, crap” But what came out of my mouth as I hit the ground, landing painfully on the exact same elbow in the exact same place that was just finally starting to heal from my running fall of more than a month ago, was “F—!!” I didn’t realize what I was saying until too late, and I looked up to see a crowd of children staring at me as they waited in line at the ice cream truck.
I felt really awful.
Nacho said they probably didn’t hear what I said because they were all watching me fall. Maybe.
