When will I learn?

Well, I fell again, in a rather spectacular fashion. I was crossing St. Clair on Mt. Pleasant, and had just passed a right-turning bus (on the left! I’m not dumb enough to try to pass a right-turning bus on the right!), and was signaling that I was going to go back to the right-hand side of the lane (and therefore only had one hand on the handles) when *BUMP*, I hit a large ridge in the road, which turned the tire sideways, and I went straight over the handlebars, skidding to a stop near the curb. My bike flew overtop of me, crashing into a hedge.

As I got up, I noticed that the crash had apparently turned both my front light and my bike computer around, which was quite a shock until I realized that it was actually the whole handlebars which had gotten turned around. I spun it back and then just sort of stood there for a while, catching my breath and calming down a little. A lady driving by asked me if I was okay, and if I needed a ride somewhere, but I told her I was fine, which wasn’t entirely the truth. My knees are pretty much fine, a little scrape, perhaps. My elbow is completely ripped up, and even though I cleaned it thoroughly with soap and water and a lot of scrubbing, it still looks pretty ugly, and is probably going to scab up something awful. Worse than that, my shoulder is really sore again, in the same way that it was after my last fall, which can’t be good. I really need to get that looked at sometime. The worst thing, however, is that I ripped the elbow of my cycling shirt. Yeah, I can darn it, but darn it, I liked that shirt! But with every negative, there comes a positive. The power button on my Palm TX started working again. Weird. Maybe the next time I fall, the sound will come back on.

So, in summary, signaling on a bicycle is bad! No, not really. Maybe the lesson is more that bumps in the road aren’t the greatest, especially when you don’t have your hands on the handlebars. Other than that, I don’t really think I have any takeaways from this one. That intersection of St. Clair and Mt. Pleasant is treacherous, perhaps.