The Misadventures of Mark - Episode 2: Pedal to the Olympic Medal

I had just dropped off my parents' Prius at the dealership for some routine maintenance.  I was happy to help them out.  I just wasn't expecting to risk my life in doing so, nor in such Olympic fashion.

Outside, the rain was trickling down, drizzling like a stopped up sprinkler.  The roads glistened with a lip-gloss sheen.  After dropping off the car, I had elected to bike home for some exercise and fresh air. I wasn't expecting rain.

I was riding along at a pretty good clip.  Not fast enough to make anyone jealous, but with enough top-gear gusto to cover some distance.  That's when it happened.

Like the gears of a meticulously calibrated clock, a series of events set into motion.  Out of the left-hand side-road just ahead of me, a burly pickup pulled forward.  It groaned to a stop with all the grace of an overloaded freight train, but stopped nonetheless.  I figured the driver had seen me.  I continued on, my wheels humming in dual cyclones of rain water.

I began crossing the side-road.  The pickup remained politely stationary.  Then without warning, the pickup began creeping forward, first an innocent roll as if anticipating my passing, then an intentional acceleration as if completely oblivious to my squishy biker presence.

There's a famous math equation in the physics world.  F = MA.  Force equals mass times acceleration.  Put simply, this means the more something weighs and the faster it's going than you, the more it hurts when it hits you.  The burly pickup had me seriously outclassed in both the mass and acceleration department.  Yeah, this was gonna hurt.

I didn't think.  I didn't have time to think.  I just reacted, my body making executive decisions without consulting me first.

My fingers flexed.  I slammed on the brakes.  Like a football player about to be sacked, I veered to the right, attempting to create a pocket of extra space to at least lessen the blow.

My front and back brakes squealed a harrowing harmony.  My knuckles went white and probably my face too.  Like wringing water from a wet washcloth, I desperately tried to squeeze every last drop of stopping power from my meager bike brakes.

Suddenly, the rear brake went limp, abruptly giving out as it disconnected.  The front brake remained engaged.  A pair of poorly balanced math equations, I braced for the inevitable result.

Like their misspelled counterpart suggests, brakes are good at breaking. Especially the back ones.  Especially when you need them the most.

In an instant I was airborne, catapulted like a rock from a piece of siege equipment.  The bike had managed to stop just short of the truck, but I had kept going, locked into my perilous parabola.

For those dying to know what it feels like to be launched from a trebuchet, being thrown from your bike serves as a close approximation.

When you sign up for athletics in school you don't usually do so with the foresight they might one day save your life.  Today, all those years of grueling practices and repetitive drills may have done just that.  In what would become a series of acrobatic maneuvers I credit to a combination of cross-country skiing, running, and track, I managed the impossible.  

Somehow, in a leap frog stunt more nimble than I should be capable of, I pulled my feet up and over the handlebars.  If Jack be nimble and Jack be quick, Mark be nimble and Mark jump far.  Mark jump over the handlebar.

In a midair crouch, I cleared my bike avoiding a devastating trip.  I sailed through the air, and despite embarrassingly little gymnastic experience, I stuck the landing.  Sort of.

I hit the ground on my feet, but off kilter.  Like a skier fumbling through an icy turn, I regained my balance as I stumbled forward.  But balance alone wasn't going to save me.

I had also hit the ground with a generous surplus of momentum, a surplus that my relatively stationary legs weren't ready for.  My body must have reflexively called upon my long dormant 100m dash experience.  Like a sprinter blasting out of the blocks, I surged forward, managing to get my bottom half up to speed with my top half, just in time to avoid a painful pavement face plant.

It felt like I had just won some sort of strange biking-sprinting-crashing-gymnastic hybrid event at the Olympics.  Bike vaulting.  Combining the spectacle of demolition derby with the athletic finesse of the pole vault, I could see bike vaulting really taking off, or at least the riders taking off anyways.  Incorporating the landing pad from the pole vault would probably be a good future addition.  If not a little sorry, I  hoped the man in the truck was at least entertained, maybe even impressed by my performance.  It's not everyday you get to witness the birth of a new sport.

Bike vaulting: coming to an intersection near you!

Almost as instinctively as the rest of my maneuvers, I ran back to my bike and hopped on.  Without missing a beat, I started pedaling as if nothing had happened.  And somehow, miraculously, nothing had happened.  I was 100 percent unscathed.  Like a good little boy, I had been wearing my bike helmet, but thankfully didn't have to use it.  Not this time.  Helmet, bike, and biker would live to bike another day.  Now if only I could get my rear brake working again.