THUD!---OW!!!

Sometimes you just sit wondering what to write because the title says it all. THUD!---OW!!! accurately describes so many things, in fact, that it's getting tough to enumerate. Consider:

-Getting bike gear off at work when the wire for your headphones gets caught around your bike bell and jerks your face into your handlebars...by your ears. To add insult to already-smarting injury, the CD skips too and several coworkers are passing by trying to preserve some facade of your dignity by pretending they didn't see it. Hey guys, it's okay, I know you all saw the handlebar faceplant-by-way-of-headphone-wire. Thanks for trying to be cool about it.

-While juggling backpack, commuter jacket, headphones, and helmet up three flights of stairs, dropping helmet on third-to-last stair to watch it bounce to bottom of second flight of stairs. Toss other stuff into pile on floor of third-floor landing and pound down stairs, retrieve helmet, then pound back up stairs to find your director smirking at you as you huff, puff and wheeze your way back up. (This is only partially true, at least the sarcasm part is; my director has been a huge supporter in my quest to quit and I really appreciate it.)

-Passing by friendly neighbor who ALSO bikes everywhere...going up the stairs to your floor, carrying your bike. Problem: He's also carrying his. Next Problem: You have headphones on. Yet Another Problem: He says something and extends hand in friendly gesture, to which you can only give big openmouthed grin and slight wave as you truck your bike carefully past him--and his--to your mutual floor. Hopefully he saw the headphones and put two and two together; otherwise from now one you're the friendly neighborhood Gaping Mute.

-Using an extended hand jamming into a pedestrian-signal-button as a last-ditch stop effort. This came as a result of multitasking: I was trying to pedal AND look where I was going. Okay, not just multitasking, pre-coffee multitasking on a day I woke up late and was racing out the door (sans coffee) to get to work. Somehow I underestimated the rate at which I was traveling forward and thought that my chicken-bone hand and attached chicken-bone wrist would be enough to stop me once I got to the signal button. I extended my hand, aligned it with the button, and realized a moment too late that I was going about seventeen miles per hour, which is about sixteen and a half miles per hour too fast to be traveling when attempting such a stunt. I DID stop, thank God; otherwise my non-arrival at work would've been announced that morning in wailing sirens as the EMTs from Pridemark Paramedic came to scrape my innards off of the highway. The innards that hadn't been totally vaporized by whatever vehicle flattened me in its seventy-mile-per-hour race through the light, that is. I stopped, and the jolt of pain that went up my hyperextended elbow and through to my shoulder sang like a high note shattering crystal...and I bellowed like a twenty-three year old crybaby. (The wrist, elbow, shoulder and other auxiliary joints recovered quickly, thank goodness.)

There's an authenticity to athletic klutziness that can't be designed elsewhere. Usually if you're a klutz or do something ostentatiously stupid people kind of cringe inwardly and feel bad for you. Most of the time, this reaction occurs as a result of empathy, that is, the ability to relate to another human being's plight. When you're doing something athletic, however, and you're not one of the kings or queens of slapstick comedy like Adam Sandler or the Three Stoges (this distinction is important, because they can get away with it), people just feel this rather humorous disgust. Instead of, "Oh, that poor girl," it's "Aw, that poor bastard." It's not empathy, it's more like sympathy, but mixed in with something darker, more malevolent, more woeful. Something that tells you your audience would never be so stupid as to attempt what you just did, but if they were, they'd have done it right.

Thoughts that comfort me in these dark, desolate times of desperation and plots of demise: warm summer days (after the race, of course), fuzzy kittens, sunshine streaming through the window on a Sunday afternoon...yeah, right, whatever. Truth be told, summer days in Colorado are notoriously hot, a sneaky little fact about the place they don't tell you in guides provided by the state tourism board (yes, an extra mile closer to the sun will bring you champagne powder in the winter...and desert-dry heat in the summer that will fry your skin like you wouldn't believe). There's one fuzzy animal who is ALWAYS a comfort, no matter what the ailment, though she's four years old so not a kitten and, well, yes, soft and fuzzy and super-cute, which is why I put up with the allergies. My apartment faces west so there would be lovely afternoon sunshine...if the apartment building across the "lawn" weren't across such a narrow strip of lawn I'm lucky if I ever see sunshine from inside here. But there's one thing I know for sure that always makes me laugh. There's even a true story that represents it, and it charms my inner (bruised, beaten, klutzed-out) athlete out of hiding time and time again): there is always a bigger idiot/nutjob/lunatic than you. There will always be someone more competitive, more obnoxiously devoted, more psychotic, more involved, or just more short of luck. In my case, the story involves an anonymous friend. My friend is everything more athletic than me: more devoted, more involved, more dedicated, more in tune with his training schedule (mine is like, hey, maybe i'll run today; his is: i will run for forty-five minutes today and do an hour and a half swim) and therefore, in better shape. I have little going for me here, except for one thing: his balance sucks. He made the mistake of sharing this with me, and it's my last shred of totally pathetic comfort when I make a total imbecile of myself otherwise. He rides, as do most people I know for whom cycling is somewhere between a serious hobby and an Armstrong-esque addiction, an excellent roadbike, lightweight, skinny-tired, with all the standard features: arrow bar, tachometer, and, of course, clip pedals. You know, the ones that look like they're broken if you're used to looking at "regular" pedals, you have to wear cycling shoes to clip into them and once you do you're "clipped in", or better known as "the reason that guys who looks like the Village Idiot is out teetering back and forth on his bike in front of traffic waiting for the light to turn": he's clipped in, and he doesn't want to unclip. I still don't understand their purpose. This is why I ride a commuter bike or, as this particular anonymous friend refers to it as, a "tank". Unfortunately, he's probably calling it that for its weight rather than firepower...anyway, my friend's what I call a "real cyclist", you know, head-to-toe Pearl Izumi chamois and jersey, power gels and bars and God knows what else tucked into the pockets in the back of the jersey, Shimano bike shoes, helmet that streamlines the back of his head into his total cycling form so he's more aerodynamic, the whole nine. Anyway, as I said, my buddy's balance isn't anything to brag about, and he once said that, a couple of times each year he'll be coming to a stop and preparing to unclip, and just kind of blank on putting his weight to the correct side. Now, when cyclists unclip at a stop, they'll only do one side and put their weight down on that foot while stopped. If they shift their weight to the wrong side, they...fall over. Or so I'm told. My friend swears it's true, and I think I'm going to have to start spying on him, because this, to me, is what is intrinsically wrong with (and why I'll never get them myself) clips. I've been wanting to see this for ages: some all-out cyclist looking smooth as butt'a coming to a stop...and then literally falling over to one side. Once you're at that point, you're stuck just falling, you can't possibly unclip fast enough. It's been something I've longed to witness for a very, very long time, in part because I KNOW it happens, and this is the first I've heard anyone actually admit to it, and in part because whenever those sleek road riders pass me on their sleek Giants and Schwinns in their sleek chamois and aerodynamic headgear I feel slightly inferior on my "tank", dressed in whatever work clothes I'm wearing and my commuter jacket, hauling a big blue backpack or a black messenger bag on my back.

But I will never fall over at a stop on the tank, at least not for lack of clippage. And someday, they probably will.