Bicycle

Has anyone noticed lately that in Janesville, more and more bicycle lanes are springing up around the city. The most recently noticed one was when I was driving home from my brother's house after the fireworks, all up and down Wright Road.

I'm not much of a cyclist. In fact, most of my experiences with a bicycle have been catastrophic. My first 10 speed bike that I got (a red Ross) never operated the same after I crashed it into a parked car, tumbled over what we found out later was a brand new Cadillac, and landed on the curb, as I was riding it to the baseball park to watch my brother's game. In all, I had only had the bike about 5 hours.

The second major bike incident happened to be when I was out of college but visiting my fraternity brothers in Ripon. Having had too much to drink, a group of us decided we were hungry. We decided to road trip to the local Country Kitchen (rather, Bitchin' Kitchen) to get some food. After combing the freshmen dorms for "available" bicycles, we found our trusty steeds and proceeded on our way for an after hours snack.

I happened to pick the only bike with flat tires.

On our way there, one of my friends, Ray, decided he was Greg LeMond. Jumping off curbs, speeding ahead, cutting people off, he was having a great time. I, on the other hand, had all I could do to keep my balance, let alone keep the bike moving while riding on rims.

Clipping my front tire, Ray sped away. I was not so fortunate. I flipped over the handlebars and scraped my face on the asphalt. I was seeing triple. Everyone kept telling me I was fine. Being the smart one, I kept on going. After all, food was important. After I went into the bathroom at the restaurant, I realized that all of my friends lied to me.

I WAS HIDEOUS!

With a huge 3 inch wide layer of skin taken off the right side of my face, I looked like chopped liver. Never trust your friends' judgement when 1) they're drunk, 2) they're hungry, and 3) they want to continue having a good time and have no time for wet blankets.

It's been a while since the trauma I had back in the early 1990's. And it's been about the same amount of time since I've gotten on a bike. Whatever it was that caused me to have a weak moment and actually BUY another bicycle still puzzles me. But, it's pretty much a like-new Trek mountain bike with VERY low mileage that still hangs in my garage. It looks great there.

I don't know, if ever, I will try my luck again at riding a bike, let alone use the new bike lanes in town. I'm a bit paranoid. Everyone says that things happen in threes. The next misfortune would be number three. I don't know if I want to find out how things would play out. After all, they seem to have gotten progressively more violent.

Given that Janesvillains (villains being the operative part of the word) are not good about yielding and stopping, I don't want my biggest fear to be realized. Then again, the new bike lanes look nice and are sure enticing....

Hmm.....I'm tempted.