BREAKING NEWS: American Airlines Achieves New Breakthrough in Discomfort Technology

Spaced Out

In unprecedented turnaround time, American Airlines has achieved previously unimaginable levels of passenger discomfort.  While some industries have slowed substantially, the airline discomfort market continues to see nearly unfettered growth in large part due to revolutionary new discomfort tech pioneered by American Airlines.

For years, the airline discomfort industry has made impressive improvements in overall discomfort primarily by axing legroom.  However, after a sudden stagnation in the legroom sector, they had to get creative.

Face Jam

"You see, there's really only so far you can squeeze a leg before you start butting up against the laws of physics: stress fractures, implosions of the femur, accidental amputation, things like that," says  American Airlines Chief Discomfort Scientist, Les Rume.  "Exploiting the relatively untapped 'face room' reserve seemed like the logical next step."

American Airlines Chief Financial Officer Amm Gready echoed the sentiment, reassuring worried consumers and sounding as upbeat as ever, "Tapping into passenger 'face room' should allow us to keep our aggressive discomfort development cycle on track.  After all, when it comes to delay, there's just no room at all in this breakneck business."

Breakneck indeed.  After my own recent airline travel, I can personally confirm these much lauded 'face room' developments.  This isn't just a load of poppycock, people.  This is the real deal.

The Discomfort Difference

Just the other day, my wife and I were flown down to preview the state of the art tech. First, we flew Alaska Airlines, an airline with some of the lowest discomfort ratings on record.  This was to prepare us for the contrast in technology we were about to witness.  And let me tell you. The difference is stark.

Next, my wife and I hopped aboard an American Airlines flight.  Mere seconds after take off, the people in front of us promptly reclined.  Like a bus backing up into my face, the seat-back drew closer and closer until finally with a groan, the seat-back came to a halt...six inches from my face.  It really is a sight to behold if you can manage to uncross your eyes.  But that's not even the half of it.

No butts about it.  The passenger scrunching tech is a sight to behold!

Feature Rich

The clever engineers innovating in airplane discomfort have really outdone themselves, creating a fully sensory experience.  In addition to feeling like I was in a garbage compactor, I could literally taste the hair spray of the passenger in front of me.  Heck, I could count individual hairs.  Now that's hi-definition discomfort!

Another interesting engineering feature is the overhead lamp which now shines directly into the eyes of the person reclining in front of you.  We are told the purpose of this feature is to highlight just how close your nose is to the seat-back and in turn cement just how uncomfortable you are.  It also serves to create a synergy of discomfort making both you and the person in front of you simultaneously uncomfortable.  Ingenious! However, your mileage may vary depending on your individual olfactory form factor.

A picture of me in my plane seat.

The Nose Knows

Now, I have a fairly moderate nose, but people with more well-endowed nasal cavities may find they have next to no room at all, leading to what I'm told are bonus experiences such as involuntary hair-huffage (providing the passenger in front of them actually has hair).  All this coalesces together to create a discomfort experience that is truly unrivaled in the airline industry.  But interestingly enough, not everyone is pleased.  

For years the Council on Really Astoundingly Mashed Plane Passengers Experiencing Discomfort (CRAMPPED), has sought to undermine this state-of-the-art discomfort tech.  A non-profit fighting under the guise of basic airline passenger rights, CRAMPPED has made claims as extraordinary as saying passengers don't actually like having even less room than when they were in the womb.  CRAMPPED has said they will continue to monitor the situation.

The Garden

The Garden
by Mark Tyler Chase

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked
"A gardener in the orchards of your heart," he replied
"Faithfully watering these flowers of yours
 Tending them 'til the day I die"

"Why would you do a thing like that when
There are gardens far fairer and greener than mine
Don't you see there are thorns and brambles here
Walls covered in a cobweb of vines"

"But these flowers here at the center of the garden
Are of a breed so pure and rare
Throughout the Earth I've not seen their like
Their beauty beyond compare"

"Those are a shielded sight, few care to see
Most stay at the vine-covered wall, gazing haphazardly
And the ones that stroll through the gate, do not often stay
They'll pick a flower and be gone, come the red sun's rays"

"But I would water these roots with my soul
Sun their leaves with my heart
Watch the petals and their gentle sway
Like the sails of a ship, its voyage about to start

For a flower closed is safe from harm, but robbed of beauty too
It cannot spread the pollen of joy or the freedom of full bloom
But rooted in the soils of trust, your petals may unfurl free
Beneath the warm sun of my heart, blossom!
Comfort in Vulnerability"

Solved: Mark and The Mystery of The Overly Oriental Text

Today, I received my second Chinese-character text message.  I don't speak Chinese.  These texts are from my mom.  She doesn't speak Chinese either.

  

Now, my mother is awesome for a multitude of reasons, and her texts tend to be as well.  Normally, I wouldn't think twice about a barrage of Chinese characters.  But these Chinese characters weren't just obfuscating some boring old, plain-jane, run-of-the-mill FYI text.  They were obfuscating a mother's love!  And, I think we can all agree. That's just not okay.

Coupling these likely love-laden texts with a history of way too much computer troubleshooting and you have no choice, but to get to the bottom of the issue.  I wasn't about to wait idly by whilst the technological top dogs argued about who's fault it was, let alone muster up a fix.  Besides, whatever fix they would eventually muster probably wouldn't be applied retroactively anyways, meaning while future texts would be saved, this current treasure-trove-of-a-text would be forever lost in translation.  

I wasn't about to allow such a travesty.  Not on my watch.  Errr phone.  Yes, phone.  Which also kind of serves as my watch.

So, here's the crux of the issue:

1)  You can be minding your own business when suddenly someone you know sends you a somewhat lengthy text.  To the sender this text message looks exactly like the text message they (or auto-correct) typed.  To the receiver, said text message appears like a Chinese version of alphabet soup stirred by a kitchen-aid on a rampage.  It is not legible.

2)  It's a recent issue, appearing to have started on the early-side of mid-October, around abouts October 10th.

3)  The issue is widespread and phone-agnostic, meaning it's affecting phones of all types regardless of brand, not just iPhone or Android.

4)  Nearest I can tell, the issue seems to only be happening on AT&T's network.  I have yet to see anyone on another network report this issue.  The only people reporting it seem to be on the AT&T network.  Please, correct me if you see otherwise.

So in summary:  A phone-agnostic, network-specific issue is turning texts from a sender into oriental gibberish for the receiver.  Fun.

After extensive research and troubleshooting.  I have found zee issue!  And not just an issue, but a solution!  It is...get ready for it...an encoding issue!

What does all this mean?  Well, "encoding" is basically the technological equivalent of translation.  All those lovely little characters we type in our texts are actually stored as unique number values under the hood.  These unique number values are then sent across a network, and translated back to their alphabetic, eye-friendly form.  At least, that's how it's supposed to work anyways.

The problem is, in the same way there are a lot of languages in the world, there are also a lot of encoding formats.  How are you storing the number-representation of those characters?  Thankfully, some encoding formats are more common than others.  Two of the most common are UTF-8 and UTF-16 (UTF stands for Universal Transformation Format).  Fun fact: About 90% of websites use UTF-8 encoding, probably including these characters you are reading right now (that's kind of deep...character-encoding-ception?).  

Hmmmm.  So, what would happen if we used UTF-16 when we were supposed to be using UTF-8?  Brace yourself for scary (yet informative) barrages of numbers and characters.

Take this barrage of less than helpful text I recently received:

䁈䁩䀠䁍䁡䁲䁫䀡䀊䁓䁯䁲䁲䁹䀠䁉䀠䁭䁩䁳䁳䁥䁤䀠䁹䁯䁵䁲䀠䁣䁡䁬䁬䀮䀠䁄䁡䁤䀠䁳䁡䁹䁳䀠䁨䁥䀠䁷䁯䁵䁬䁤䀠䁬䁥䁴䀠䁴䁨䁥䀠䁤䁥䁡䁬䁥䁲䀠䁴䁡䁫䁥䀠䁴䁨䁥䀠䁯䁬䁤䀠䁳䁮䁯䁷䀠䁴䁩䁲䁥䁳䀮䀠䁈䁥䀠䁤䁯䁥䁳䁮䀧䁴䀠䁨䁡䁮䁧䀠䁯䁮䀠䁴䁯䀠䁯䁬䁤䀠䁳䁮䁯䁷䀠䁴䁩䁲䁥䁳䀮䀠䀊堼ꜻ䀠䁌䁯䁶䁥䀠䁡䁮䁤䀠䁈䁵䁧䁳䀬䀊䀠䀠䀠䀠䀠䀠䁍䁯䁭

Converted to UTF-16 we get these lovely blocks of encoded goodness:

4048 4069 4020 404D 4061 4072 406B 4021 400A 4053 406F 4072 4072 4079 4020 4049 4020 406D 4069 4073 4073 4065 4064 4020 4079 406F 4075 4072 4020 4063 4061 406C 406C 402E 4020 4044 4061 4064 4020 4073 4061 4079 4073 4020 4068 4065 4020 4077 406F 4075 406C 4064 4020 406C 4065 4074 4020 4074 4068 4065 4020 4064 4065 4061 406C 4065 4072 4020 4074 4061 406B 4065 4020 4074 4068 4065 4020 406F 406C 4064 4020 4073 406E 406F 4077 4020 4074 4069 4072 4065 4073 402E 4020 4048 4065 4020 4064 406F 4065 4073 406E 4027 4074 4020 4068 4061 406E 4067 4020 406F 406E 4020 4074 406F 4020 406F 406C 4064 4020 4073 406E 406F 4077 4020 4074 4069 4072 4065 4073 402E 4020 400A 583C A73B 4020 404C 406F 4076 4065 4020 4061 406E 4064 4020 4048 4075 4067 4073 402C 400A 4020 4020 4020 4020 4020 4020 404D 406F 406D

Now, you'll notice, each of these blocks starts with a "40."  Well, that's a little conspicuous.  Let's nix all those 40s, leaving us with the following:

48 69 20 4D 61 72 6B 21 0A 53 6F 72 72 79 20 49 20 6D 69 73 73 65 64 20 79 6F 75 72 20 63 61 6C 6C 2E 20 44 61 64 20 73 61 79 73 20 68 65 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 20 6C 65 74 20 74 68 65 20 64 65 61 6C 65 72 20 74 61 6B 65 20 74 68 65 20 6F 6C 64 20 73 6E 6F 77 20 74 69 72 65 73 2E 20 48 65 20 64 6F 65 73 6E 27 74 20 68 61 6E 67 20 6F 6E 20 74 6F 20 6F 6C 64 20 73 6E 6F 77 20 74 69 72 65 73 2E 20 0A 0x583C 0xA73B 20 4C 6F 76 65 20 61 6E 64 20 48 75 67 73 2C 0A 20 20 20 20 20 20 4D 6F 6D

Now, the above looks a lot like what could be considered UTF-8 (which remember is the most common encoding format on the web).  Treating this as UTF-8 and translating it back into alphabet world we get something slightly less suspicious.  Not only that, we get this highly-important, world-changing text message!

Hi Mark!

Sorry I missed your call. Dad says he would let the dealer take the old snow tires. He doesn't hang on to old snow tires. 

convertUTF82Char: error1 583C! convertUTF82Char: error1 A73B!  Love and Hugs,

      Mom

(Note:  I'm assuming the "errors" are emojis.)

Hey! That almost looks like a text message!

Now, let's really break it down.  You'll recall what was really mucking everything up was a "40" at the beginning of each character block.  This 40 is actually hexadecimal.  If you convert 40 from hexadecimal to binary (which is what all these numbers are ultimately represented as) what do you get?  Something absurdly simple, a 1 followed by a bunch of 0 (six zeroes to be exact).  That's 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 or 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 (to include the full eight bits for convention sake).  

40 (hexadecimal) = 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 (binary)

If we change that 1 to a 0, that 40 that was originally mucking everything up just becomes plain old zero.  And zeroes preceding numbers don't muck anything up. 

So what's going on in this big, nasty issue?  Somewhere along the line in AT&T's network an extra 1 is getting tacked on.  That's one bit getting flipped from 0 to 1.  Off to on.

To anyone out there who thinks one person can't make a difference, just remember:  Flipping a lone bit from 0 to 1 is the difference between legible text messages and gobbly-gook.  You matter.  You make a difference.

Now, unfortunately, I cannot change that 1 back to a 0.  That's AT&T's job.  But I can at least show you how to unscramble the gobby-gook into something meaningful until AT&T does fix it.

So what should you do if you receive crazy weird Chinese texts like this from people you know don't speak Chinese?  With the following, you too can save the texting-world with relative ease:

1)  Send the barrage of Chinese characters to yourself as an email (so you can do this on a computer rather than a phone).  On your computer, copy the characters from your email.

2)  Go to this helpful website (that will do all the fancy UTF conversion for you.) and paste the Chinese characters from your email into the big green box.  Hit the big button "Convert."

3)  Scroll down to the box labeled UTF-16, and copy all the characters.

4)  Open a word-processor and paste the UTF-16 characters.  Do a "Find and Replace" operation, finding all the "40"s and replacing them with nothing (essentially deleting them).  Copy the now, 40-less text.

5)  Go back to the super helpful website from earlier and paste the text into the UTF-8 box.  Hit the button "Convert."

6)  Scroll to the top and behold.

Alternatively, you can just pester the sender to shoot you a picture of their text.  That's probably easier.  A whole lot easier.  But, then you wouldn't feel like a cryptic, code-cracking, cyber-junky, which everyone should experience briefly at least once in their lifetime, even if just to read their mom's text message.

If you're frustrated with technology and could use a little more love in your life, please check out my latest blog post.

Running In Circles

Back in 2014, my band Burning Bush released its debut album Honesty in a Box (which hey you can listen to on the side over there!).  It's no coincidence this project began immediately following college graduation. 

After earning a math degree, my brain had some serious re-calibrating to do.  College, especially the last couple years, becomes incredibly narrow.  It's kind of like eating your favorite cereal every day for four years.  Now matter how much you liked it at the beginning, after awhile it just starts tasting like soggy cardboard.  You might even go so far as to develop weird food allergies to it.  Or diabetes.

Thankfully, I managed to graduate college without developing an allergy to math, but my brain and being had begun to protest this nonstop, single-subject binge diet.  It's as if the math part of my brain had gotten so incredibly strong that the rest of my brain and even soul had begun slowly deflating, kind of like if you only did bicep curls at the gym but never worked out any other muscle groups.  You might start looking kind of funny.

After so much study of one subject, I had started to feel pretty one-dimensional.  Music was a way to make me three dimensional again, to re-inflate my soul, breathing life back into the other oxygen starved parts of my mind and soul.  But the album was more than just some therapeutic mental re-calibration.  It was also a way to wrestle with the meaning of life.  

It's so easy to get caught up in routine, to go through life with your nose to the grindstone, and get to the end of it without having really lived.  With music, I felt like I could look that meaning straight in the eyes.  Not to mention have a lot of fun doing it at the same time.  Because you have to admit.  Music can be as joyful as it is powerful.

In my opinion, music is the highest form of communication.  Spoken word is great.  I love poetry.  I love prose (heck I wrote a blog dedicated to the stuff).  And you can get pretty far with words.  You can use inflection, word choice, writer's voice to convey an idea.  But when you pair those same words with the right music, the music takes on a-whole-nother dimension.  The music transports the words to a place mere words could never go.

This album was an attempt to harness that beautiful, mysterious, powerful force of music to make a positive contribution to this troubled world.  We've all listened to that song that gets us through the bad day, helps us celebrate the good one, or just slaps us sober and makes us think.  The hope was to have an album to inject some of those songs into the world.

As with most albums, there were songs that never made it on the record, mostly due to time constraints.  This is one of those songs.  It's a song that's always felt especially honest even to this day.  It's a song that definitely belongs on album number two.  But before album number two, you can listen to this acoustic demo.  The song is called Running in Circles.

Running in Circles

All words and music by Mark Chase

Running in circles

Trapped trying to get free

I’d rather drown in your ocean

Than swim in my own sea

And I’ll remember this

The love you’ve shown

No longer only yours

It’s part of my own

I’m sick

I need your medicine
I’m tired

Where do I begin?

When I’m down

And I could use a hand up

In Life

Running in circles, trying to get free

Running in circles, it’s so like me

Running in circles, the start’s the end

Running in circles, back to you again

Looking left and right

I’m wishing for the sky

I’d rather jump off your precipice

Than stand on my highest high

You promise to remember

Always recall

Your arms are outstretched

Before I fall

I’m sick!

I need your medicine
I’m tired!

Where do I begin?

When I’m down!

I could use a hand up

In Life

Running in circles, trying to get away

Running in circles, to the same old place

Running in circles, all confused

Running in circles, back to you

I’m sick!

I need your medicine
I’m tired!

Where do I begin?

When I’m down!

I could use a hand up

In Life

The Misadventures of Mark - Episode 3: Real Men Kawai

Giving birth to another human being is a purportedly painful experience.  So, in some ways, it was only fitting that my mom's birthday request was also a "labor of love."

The gift was a piano, one that came with a generous, complimentary installation service, courtesy of "the rest of the family."  Purchasing the piano was easy since dollar bills are relatively light, easily transported objects.  Moving the piano on the other hand.  Well, well.  That was another story.

Another story indeed!  We had to ascend a whole two of them (three if you count this story I'm currently writing, which has involved a lot of retroactive mental lifting just to recall the experience)!

So, how do you move a piano anyway?  I'm glad you asked. The remnants of my muscles are dying to tell you.  After approximately an hour of grunting and groaning, I now consider myself a master in this subject area and completely qualified to answer this daunting question. The way you move a piano is the same way you build a pyramid. You use alien technology and/or a lot of slave labor. Unfortunately for us, we had neither.  All we had were muscles.

The journey begins.  Even the Vanagon groaned a little.

My brother and I both workout regularly. We run. We lift weights. We attempt to eat more frequently from the "my body is a temple menu" than from the "woopie, life is short menu." Let me tell you, though. No matter how much you workout, nothing can prepare you for moving a piano except maybe prior experience with a hernia.

Pianos are not to be trifled with or taken lightly.  Actually, let me rephrase that.  Pianos cannot be taken lightly.

In a non-steroid-infused human, the only muscle group strong enough to move a piano is your legs. Your arms and hands are just handles to use while the rest of your body attempts to hold together.

Thankfully, my brother and I are both blessed with tree trunks for legs. All, the same, moving a piano up a stairway makes you wonder if you won't be taking your own Stairway to Heaven before the end of it.

If you look closely on the stairs, you'll notice we had to take the railings off.  

Somehow, despite the piano's best efforts, we managed to lay the piano to rest before it did the same to us. After much grunting, growing, praying, and a little kawai-ing, we nestled the piano into it's final place.

Phew! I straightened my back and took a breath. Like a cattle brand, the weight of the piano felt forever etched into my muscle fibers, a masochistic diary of each movement. I wouldn't be forgetting this day for a long time to come. But, we had done it!

The piano was all in one piece, and somehow, we were too. Part of me thought that by the time we had finished rolling it to its destination, the sun would have burnt out and perpetual night would have taken over. But it seemed we'd finished before the sun even went down. I guess miracles really do happen.

The brand name Kawai is a sneaky double entendre: part warning, part mirthful laugh. 

Since that day, I've never be able to look at a piano the same way. No longer do I see furnished wood and innocent ebony, ivory keys. Instead, I involuntarily calculate all the paths the lifters must've stumbled through to bring it to its current resting place. 

I'm not what I would consider a wise person, by any means, and most of the time the best advice I could give anyone would be to be wary of advice.  That said, they say wisdom is some strange mix of knowledge, intuition, and experience. Well, after this experience, I think I may have finally gleamed one, lone nugget of wisdom. So future piano owners and home builders.  Please.  Listen up! Don't wait until you have a house to decide if you want a piano. Get the piano first. Build the house around it. You'll thank me later.

Happiness, Gratitude, Rain

Happiness, Gratitude, Rain by Mark Chase

Windows bathed in a sheet of rain
Tears down a face, but not from pain
Happiness is the sight within these eyes
Happiness...enough to cry

You are the rain, I the ground beneath
Flooding with joy, watering with peace
Filling, saturating, blessed beyond measure
Beauty amidst the rain drop weather

On the roof above, a rumbling applause
A thousand hands clapping, the sound of sincere awe
Gratitude found in the spirit of reflection
Two paths and their delicate intersection

The most precious treasure, bathed in firelight
A gift not bought, but given, once a life
A gift to be guarded in the folds of a heart
Flawed, yet perfect, masterpiece of art

Gratitude on the roof
Life on the ground
Sad Happiness on the windows
Love's atmosphere surrounds

[Aside: I couldn't make up my mind whether or not to include illustrations. On the one hand, the words should be doing most of the painting, but on the other hand pictures can be worth a thousand words (or so they say). Basically, I wasn't sure if the pictures would enhance or detract from the poem. So, rather than make this extremely difficult, once-in-a-life-time, course-altering decision, I just included both versions. That way you can appreciate each version, pick your favorite, all without having to travel to a parallel universe where I had decided to post the other. After all, quantum mechanics can get a bit messy.]

Happiness, Gratitude, Rain (Illustrated) by Mark Chase

Windows bathed in a sheet of rain

Tears down a face, but not from pain

Happiness is the sight within these eyes

Happiness...enough to cry

You are the rain, I the ground beneath

Flooding with joy, watering with peace

Filling, saturating, blessed beyond measure

Beauty amidst the rain drop weather

On the roof above, a rumbling applause

A thousand hands clapping, the sound of sincere awe

Gratitude found in the spirit of reflection

Two paths and their delicate intersection

The most precious treasure, bathed in firelight

A gift not bought, but given, once a life

Flawed, yet perfect, masterpiece of art

A gift to be guarded in the folds of a heart

Gratitude on the roof

Life on the ground

Sad Happiness on the windows

Love's atmosphere surrounds

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.