practice makes perfect. or something.
So Saturday rolled around, and like always, it was a beautiful day, which
translates to "practice on the bike day." My bike was still at work (since
I left it there after it got back from the mechanic), so Peter drove it back
over to Apple. He went inside to get actual work done (note to peter's boss:
see? he works saturdays. he was at work sunday night, too. so there.), and
I hung out in the parking lot with my car, my bike, and an ever-increasingly
warm can of Dr. Pepper.
I started off doing the usual figure-8's up and down the rows of the parking lot (it's really unfortunate that it's impossible to describe the Apple parking lot) and practicing stopping and starting again. After I got bored of that, I wanted to practice shifting, y'know, now that the shift lever wasn't bent underneath the crankcase.
And practice I did. I even got up to the high end of 3rd gear in that parking lot, which, if you ever practice in parking lots, really puts the fear of death into you. Maybe there's something about California parking lots, but, damn, people just don't look. I felt really badly -- I passed a woman walking her little yippy-dog along one of the medians in the parking lot, and I meant to put my turn signal on, but I accidentally hit the horn right as I passed her. The dog freaked out, and I can't say it didn't scare the beehoozies out of her, too. So, uh, sorry, lady in the Apple parking lot. My bad.
tryin' to be cool.
At my last job, there was a ping-pong table in the game room, and my friend
Andrea and I would play ping-pong all the time. Being the kind of people that
we are, we'd frequently try fancy-schmancy moves, and (also, being the kind
of people that we are) we would frequently make asses of ourselves when these
moves did not pan out in the slightest. We called this "tryin' to be cool,"
and whenever someone's "smash" would hit the net, or a return would spin
itself off the table, we chorus, "tryin' to be cool, tryin' to be cool."
There is a point here. Remember this.
So, let me once again attempt to explain the Apple parking lot. Picture a circular grouping of large buildings. Now, imagine that there's a street (admittedly a very narrow and not-very-helpful-except-to-get-in-and-out-of-the-parking-lot street) circling the buildings. Now, imagine a huge parking lot encircling that whole mess. Got it? Didn't think so. Anyways, the street's the important part here, anyways.
So, if you're exiting the parking lot, you'll come up to a stop sign when you get to the aforementioned street. I had been riding around in the parking lot, and my intention was to get onto the street and head over to a different group of buildings with a different parking lot. Well, about the time I was coming up to the stop sign, I noticed that there was no traffic whatsoever. I also recalled that often when I'm on Peter's bike and there's no traffic, he doesn't put his foot down at stop signs, but the bike kinda magically slows, pauses for a moment, and then he takes off again. I decide that I want to try this.
This is about the time where the "tryin' to be cool" refrain should echo around the room.
I wiped the hell out. As far as I can figure out, I slowed down correctly, but instead of coming to a complete stop like a normal beginner, I tried (and failed) to judge the bike's balance correctly, and the bike started tipping over before I could give it throttle again to straighten out. And, due to the fact that I am Very Short, once my bike starts tipping, if I don't catch it right away, it's on the ground. Which is exactly what happened here.
i am superman.
The Very Amazingly Cool part is that....I picked the bike back up. Alone.
All me. 350 pounds of Honda Nighthawk, and that was all me, baybee. I even
got the bike back in neutral so that I could push it into a parking space
(my bike won't move if it's not in neutral. And, not terribly surprisingly,
dropping the bike pushed the shift lever back under the crankcase). I am
amazing. A cute little man came out of the building around this time and
saw me pushing the bike into the parking spot. "Do you need any help?"
said he. And I could answer honestly, "nah, I just need to push this over
here so I can work on bending the shift lever back out. Now that it's back
in neutral, there's no problem." I need no help! I am Superman! :D
So I busted out my cell phone and called Peter's office. He had a long piece of sturdy piping in his car (why? dunno.) and so he brought it out, and we were able to pry the shift lever back out ("Maybe you should invest in a spare lever if you're going to keep doing this, babe."). To make a long story short (too late!), I drove the bike back around to my tepid Dr. Pepper, waited a few minutes, and then rode it around the parking lot again to ensure that I was still smarter than the bike.
Somehow, though, I doubt that Superman's back and shoulders still hurt 3 days after performing some amazing feat of strength. But then again, Superman doesn't get the sympathy backrub from Peter, so I guess it all evens out in the end.
jesus, someone actually kinda has a picture
OK, here's a partial picture of the Apple parking lot. So you can see how there a
stop sign right under (and to the right of) Einstein, and that's the road
I was talking about right there. And there's a couple of the medians,
with trees on it. Hrm. As my coworker Alan pointed out, maybe the picture
doesn't really help much, either. Oh well.