System Failure

My friend, Mark, warned me it would happen.... that at some point I would forget my shoes were clipped onto my pedals and I would fall over on my bike.

I smiled and nodded, indulging him as he explained HOW I should fall to prevent injury, all the while not really believing it would happen.  After all, I reasoned, I already had four post-clipless-pedal rides on my bike and had the clipping in and out of the pedals down to a science.  I had a system.  About twenty feet before any desired stop, I would swing my ankles out, disengage the clips and set my feet lightly on top of the pedals so I could put one foot down on the ground when I came to a stop.

In fact, so adept was I at this system that I was even compensating for a tighter left clip by always disengaging my right foot first and using that foot to ground myself when stopping so I could take my time getting my left foot out of its binding.

Furthermore, it's not like I am riding down steep, uneven hills on a mountain bike, where at any second I might hit a divot or root and lose my balance.  This road biking stuff is easy peasy, and I had pretty much convinced myself that I would be the one person in the history of clips who looked back at the experience and said at the Novice Long Distance Cyclist Awards where I won first place honors, "You know, I never did fall in all the time was learning to ride in clips.  It's been amazing."

Yep, you guessed it.  I fell yesterday, exactly in the way that Mark predicted.  And actually, I almost wish I HAD been mountain biking and hit a divot and crashed down.  At least that's understandable and makes for a great story of heroism and endurance.  In my case, I rode over thirty miles with lots of starts and stops where I had no problem whatsoever working my clips, and then got to my car at the end of the ride (where my friend Bob was waiting to take me back to the house), came to a stop, forgot I was still in the clips, and down, down I went, almost in slow motion, hitting my helmeted head on the car as I went, slumping painfully onto the ground.

Poor Bob saw my fall and heard my helmet hit the car and jumped out, finding me crumpled in a heap on the passenger side.  "I'm okay... I'm okay," I assured him, dazed and mad at myself.

In retrospect, I got off fairly easy with some bumps and bruises.  I would have been devastated to make it one week from The Ride, only to break an ankle or wrist and be unable to do the trip.

Later, Fred texted me that he had gotten clipless pedals at the bike store earlier that day.  He fell four times in his clips. 

Aren't we a pair...

Thanks, blog.