Totally Awkward Tuesday

(If you don't read Secret Life of Tova Darling, you should. She's hilarious, and has a good compilation of awkward on her site)
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Ah, to be awkward. What a daily excursion in my life.

This week I could go with the-embarrassing-myself-in-front-of-random-guy story,

or I could go with the I-crotched-myself-twice story.

Since I always embarrass myself in front of random people, I'll go with the story of crotching myself.

A while back (read: couple of weekends ago) I went to Oregon for a family vaca. My mom, My Bro, my 8yo niece and I all loaded up and trekked 600 miles to see my oldest brother, Cookie.

The cool thing about visiting Cookie, is he's a bike (and computer, and airplane) mechanic. He put together my roadbike for me, and while we were visiting, he fixed up my old mt. bike to be my new commuter bike*.
(my roadbike - isn't she pretty? :) )
(my commuter - bike of crotching doom)

Well, last Thursday I decided to brave the weather** and ride my bike to work. Normally not a problem on my roadbike, but that day, was worse than most days. I made it to the bottom of the big hill that is between me and the lab I to work in. After pushing hard on the pedals, to get a quick start across a busy intersection, the back wheel came off. I proceeded to stumble, fall, and land my pubic bones on the cross bar, then gracefully (not) fell to the asphalt. In the middle of the intersection, with another biker behind me***. The guy behind me stopped and asked if I was ok. Jumping up and with severly wounded pride, I said I was fine, and hobbled to the sidewalk.

I got the back tire back into it's little groove, and walked up the hill. I wasn't ready to trust it, especially since I didn't have any tools to tighten the bolts with. Oh, and did I mention I was running late? Otherwise I would have run home and grabbed my other bike, but didn't have the time. I managed to balance the wheel, in it's groove, put one foot on a pedal (opposite from normal), and kick with the other - transforming my bike into a scooter. (Thank god it's summer, and campus is empty, becuase I was getting weird enough looks from the few people that saw me.) I managed to get to work, and clock in right on time.

After work, I hobbled my defective bike past the campus bike shop, and got the rear tire tightened down again. I cruised down the giant hill, no problems. Crossed one of two busy intersections, no problem. Stopped to wait for the light to change, I was all balanced and ready to kick off to cross the last busy intersection into suburbia. Light changed, I pushed hard against my pedal, and crunch. I crotched myself again on that damn bike. Off it came, and I was barely a foot into the intersection. Cars were waiting to turn, so I hopped off the bike and slid the tire back into it's damned groove and walked across the street, figurative tail between my legs, pride completely gone. I hobbled home, this time with a giant scrape forming on the inside of one of my thighs.

And that dear friends, is how I was crotched not once, but twice, in one day, by the same bike. I'm ready to throw in the towel, and throw the damned bike off of the balcony**** of my apartment.

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* I wasn't digging the idea of riding my roadbike to school, because I have at least $800 invested in that damn thing. To fix it up my old mt. bike he: put new rims on it, along with road slicks(with a layer of Mr. Tuffy stuff to protect the tubes from punctures), a new headset with grips (read: handlebars), a new chain (he even threw the old one away - it was in terrible shape) and got everything working. Oh, and he threw a little luggage rack on there. :)

** In the last 2 months, I don't think we have gone more than 3 straight days without it raining. I'm not talking about a light, happy, summer drizzle, I'm talking torrential downpour! I live in the desert for heaven's sake. It's supposed to be reaching temps of at least 90 degrees, normally higher than that.

*** *sigh*

**** God I wish I had a real balcony... that and I later discovered not only the bruise on the inner thigh, and lady-junk, but had some on my ribs from crunching into the handle-bars.

(Ooooh guess what! My birthday is in less than a week. Wheeeeeee!)
And my buddy Jake has since fixed my bike, to make the back wheel stay on. I rode it home from work today with no crotching incidents. That boy is to damn awesome sometimes. :)