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I’ve been biking to work for about four months and all and all it’s been wonderful. I’ve used a total of six subway tokens since then which pleases me greatly.

The Bike/Bus lane on Walnut is usually treated as another traffic lane and this morning, I came to a red with bumper to bumper traffic, hopped off my bike, walked it across the street, hopped back on at the other side while the flow of traffic still had a red and resumed riding in the Bike/Bus lane. The light turned green and the driver behind me started honking and yelling “get out of the lane”. This is when my knee-jerk contrarianism kicked in and I brought my bike to a complete stop, counted to four, and turned around yelling “This is a bike and bus lane, you are neither of those”.

When I turned back around, hiding my embarrassment as having yelling at a car in traffic, I saw that traffic was at a complete stop some 2 car lengths ahead of me. I lifted my bike onto the side walk, crossed the street on foot, and rode off to work.

This is the first time I purposefully turned myself in a road hazard to prove a point. I’m curious if I choose to do so again.

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The garbage truck was to my left, comfortably scissored such that there was no way to go around it on the street.  Behind it was a van, waiting for the truck to move.  I dipped right to take advantage of the dip in the curb from the parking lot entrance and my angle of attack was too narrow.  My tire slipped and I went over sideways.  I didn’t really hurt.  At all.  To the point where I gave the Buddy Christ thumbs up to the fellow in the van who watched me go down.  He smiled.  The rest of my ride felt strange and I saw why when I parked my bike: My right pedal had been completely mangled.  In addition, my seat had bent and my keys tore through my pant leg in the pocket.  All told, the spill cost me about $100 in pants, pedals, and seat cushions.

Falling off of a unicycle was much more painful than falling off of a bike.  Mind you, in this case I bit it somewhat gently, but the failure modes are different.  On a bike, you’re falling over sideways, which is short, or going over the handlebars which again has some sort of arresting motion.  On a unicycle, there’s almost nothing to slow down your fall.  The one benefit of a unicycle fall is how it looks.  Either you can skid to a stop and maybe roll or the unicycle, for whatever reason, is no longer under you, and for a brief moment you look like you’re riding an invisible unicycle.  Win-Win….until you get road rash…from falling off of a unicycle.