Live strong; fall strong

This morning, while riding my bike a couple of blocks from my house, I ate it... hard.

I had been riding for about twenty minutes, when I saw a perfect opportunity to take my bike off a sweet jump. The jump was the slope of the sidewalk on the left side of the street. Unfortunately, today is trash day, so there was a row of three trash bins just beyond the spot at which I planned to make my ascent. There are a number of reasons why this particular jump was unsuccessful; namely, basic laws of physics, but also the well-known fact that my physical prowess is limited, and my body can can best be described as "dead weight".

For this jump to have been successful, I would have had to either: jump completely over the row of bins, or lean out of the jump which would send me to the side of the bins. I attempted the latter, a far more plausible scenario given my physical dexterity. As I took off, my uncoordinated, non-athletic butt had a meeting with the trash bin, turning me sideways, in the other direction. I had failed to stay to the side of the row, thus throwing the opposite side of my body to the ground. I only skidded for seven or eight feet, though that was more than enough to tangle my bike chain. There I was—blood flowing down my pasty-white, hairless legs—trying to fix my bike chain, while a little twelve-year-old girl was laughing her head off at what she had just seen. In her defense, pasty-white, un-athletic chubby guys falling off their bikes in the middle of the streets is always pretty funny.