If I wasn’t taken – “spoken for” as they say – crashing with the exclusive audience of an incredibly beautiful woman — who showed genuine emotion for your welfare — just might be the best way to crash your bike.
But I should explain that the night before this happened was quite an event in itself and is a necessary tale to explain what happened next.
It was 2008 and Brisbane had one of those serious storms in the middle of the night and the new Inner City Bypass Tunnel seemed to have destroyed the local creek system’s ability to deal with big rain events.
I blissfully slept through all the drama. So when I woke up and started my ride to work I saw all this mud around and people on the street cleaning up. I wasn’t really sure what the deal was. I just shrugged my shoulders and thought, “Weird”. And then immediately forgot it.
That was until the bike-path-bridge over the creek was suddenly a muddy hell. Wha?
So I walked the bike through and got to work a bit splattered.
At work I discovered what had happened overnight through the news and stuff. Oh. Right.
But then I had forgotten all this by the time I was riding home. I had been smashing down Bowen Bridge Road and had aggressively leant the bike into Northey Street trying to maintain all my awesome speed.
And so I needed to swing a right into Victoria Street straight away. I had all this awesome pace and I spied this beautiful woman standing on the corner of Victoria and I saw she was watching me and although everything happened in an instant, I think I might have decided to lean into the corner just a bit more just to show off.
But in doing so I stupidly forgot the fact this road had just been flooded and there was an invisible silt and mud sliver covering the entire surface. And so BANG, before I could do anything, I was suddenly on my side and the bike and my body were sliding unceremoniously across the road. My shoulder took most of the impact. But my pride took the rest.
Somehow I managed to watch the beautiful woman’s expression the entire time. She suddenly looked horrified and put both her hands to her mouth in horror.
When I eventually came to a halt I found myself laying down in the middle of a normally busy intersection, I jumped up. I knew I had an audience so the beautiful woman and I locked eyes again and I quickly said, “I’m fine. No big deal.”
And I jumped on my bike, all dirty (and bloody underneath my clothes) and despite how painful that activity suddenly became, I pretended it was nothing and sped off hoping she would think of me as perhaps incredibly uncoordinated, but at least I just might be at the same time – incredibly tough.
I never saw that woman again. I have no photos. But if I did have to imagine what she looked like – it might be like this:
And I was at the time (and still am) a taken man. But upon reflection I think if I was single I could have totally milked that moment into an introduction and used all my charm and winced a bit just like Han Solo in Return of the Jedi cause I know for a fact that sympathy is an under-utalised resource in hooking up. TOTALLY. 🙂
But ultimately – in saying all this, if one day I once again found myself crashed if front of a beautiful woman I very, very much doubt I would do anything differently.
I would run away, or ride if I could manage it, and the only thing I would do the same is that then when I had regained some composure I’d blog about it. TRUE STORY.
DJ GLAD RAPPA 