Crashing on the sidewalk.

They got me back for lol'ing at the guy who tried to battle me on the trail the other day.

I'm carrying my french fries from Five Guys over to McDonald's. (It's the pro move. Five Guys doesn't have wifi or drinks for as cheap as $1.)

It's just a quick little zip down the sidewalk, so I hold and carry my bike lock rather than pack it away. Hard for anything to go wrong on a sidewalk.

I look ahead to the intersection and there's a countdown, under 20 seconds left to cross. I hate waiting in red lights. And I want to eat the fries while they're hot. So I start riding quick, and as the sidewalk curves, as I get close to the road and need to slow down, I feel my breaks aren't working (WTF?), and in a moment of reflex I voluntarily offer myself into the bush.

You can see the dent I made in the way they pedicured it (that section hanging parallel to the ground wasn't like that before I got there). I hit it hard and took a good tumble.

It turned out my breaks were fine, which didn't really surprise me. They were fine before Five Guys, and hard for anything to have happened to them while I was in there. Presumably all the stuff I was carrying was causing some sort of user error, and I probably would have sorted it out in a second or two. But still, I like my decision to ride into the bush.

You have to get scathed once in a while.

If you try to go through life too cleanly, it's a bigger downside when something does finally go wrong. If I pass the bush and try my luck at entering the street, it probably works out ok, but there's a chance a car doesn't see me and we all have a bad day. I'd rather just take the sure thing and crash into the bush.

I untangled my bike from the branches, gathered my belongings, and crossed the street to McDonald's. People watching must have been so confused, like how does this guy just ride into a bush.

In a lot of ways it was an allegory for my life in general. It comes off as so extreme. As maniacal. But you're just not used to the set of variables I entertain and really it might be the most careful and calculated thing you'll see all day.