I can’t tell all of the ignorant things some people have said to me since the bike accident, to complement all the very nice and very sweet words and well-wishes and gifts of candy and company from very good people I am lucky enough to know. In addition to people who have been very very nice to me, there is a whole platoon of people have taken it upon themselves to help me reform and understand my face-plant better with completely unsolicited advice. Indeed, even in defeat, there are insistent cycling-nay-sayers. A few:
1) One person, when my face was still leaking liquids and looked twice as nasty as this picture, said, “You gotta be careful out dere on dem bikes.”
No shit? Wow. Guess when I heal, I’ll have to stop riding stoned and with my eyes closed. I mean, seriously, nice way to fucking blame me for what happened without having ever seen me ride or even know what the hell caused the crash. And P.S. — “you†don’t ride anyway, so what do you know?
2) “I worry about you on that bike.”
Thanks, but, looking at the statistics and remembering driving a car, I worry about you in your car. (I don’t actually mind that one so much.)
3) The one I’ve heard the most and the one that makes me maddest: “That’s why I don’t ride a bike.”
Oh. Now. Where to begin?
What do you mean by “that“? Do you mean my injured limbs? The cuts I had? Not being able to ride for weeks and missing some awesome bike-related events? Or do you mean my wrecked bike by “that”? Maybe “that” means what it feels like when what stops your body from a speed of 25-27 miles per hour is the friction of your body hitting the ground and skidding to a halt, leaving half on your lip and pieces of your face on the cement? Do you mean that? Or maybe the sound it makes, i.e., a helmet hitting and scraping the visor off and grating metal?
Nah. I know you, and I know what “that” means when you say to me, “That’s why I don’t ride a bike.”
It could mean your own fear of riding in traffic. Well, guess what? I was not hit by a car. To my knowledge, there were no moving cars around me. Nor was I riding in the street. I was on the bike trail, and I hit an unmarked pipe, just small enough to not see in time big but enough for a poopy crash. In Baltimore, no one could get away with having that shit out in the street at 8:30 in a Wednesday morning. Certainly, getting hit by a car is a risk we all take. But in this case, when you look at me and say, “That’s why I don’t ride a bike,” that is irrelevant.
It could your own being in bad shape. But if you know me, you know I’m not exactly in shape, and I have a big ass to prove it — not to mention the belly I carry for someone my age. Being in less than great shape is a strange reason not to cycle. I am in terrible shape and look like, even in (HA!) peak riding condition.
It might mean your lack of interest. That’s cool. You don’t have to be into cycling. I’m not into driving my ass around in a car. But do you need to state your interests when I wreck? I mean, I never told someone hurt in a car accident, “Damn, that’s why I don’t have a car. Those fuckin things are deadly.”
I don’t know why I’m so pissed off at this phrase being repeated to me. It feels like a judgment on one hand – like that I’m engaging in what amounts to dangerous behavior just by riding my bike for transportation. That’s annoying enough. But it also feels like people are working out or venting some of their own issues on me (paranoia, bad fitness habits, being left out of the cycling craze, etc.). These people are making my own traumatic experience (not to throw that term around) about them.
For the record, no one I know who has gotten on a bike to go somewhere in the last few years has said anything like that. Instead, there are well-wishes — like from my nicest non-cycling friends. I am lucky to have nice people all around me. To be sure, it’s not a matter of cycling or not cycling. It’s something else. And I know it’s not me.
