I aaaaaaalmost didn’t go. It was yet another dreary morning augmented by a drizzle just light enough to bring the lurking oils and sludge to the roadway surfaces, making them slippery and slidey.
But I went. I pedaled through the spritz and shvitz across Silver Lake and Echo Park through Historic Filipinotown and up and over the climb up Lucas Street and rolled up to the location of the annual Blessing of the Bikes — and place of my birth: Good Samaritan Hospital — just in time to proceed past a robed gentleman who added a few drops of some holy water to the rain I’d absorbed.
And it quickly paid off, because in my circuitous route home wandering around downtown I ended up in front of Disney Concert Hall. Up on the sidewalk I went to get a picture of the gray building’s curves blending in against the gray skies, and banked a slow counter clockwise turn on the bike that rolled me over a stamped steel plate. Next thing I know the front tire’s lost traction and slides out from me. And the next thing I know after that is that instead of flopflailing to whatever abrasions and embarrassments awaited me on the ground I somehow managed to unclip first my left foot than my right in a semi-fluid supersplit second and step over the falling bike, finishing the maneuver standing beside 8Ball that I held by the bars in one outstretched hand as if I’d been practicing such a dismount all my biking life.
Blessed indeed.
Follow