the right hand of fate

I am clumsy. It’s true. While I pride myself on being fairly athletic and able to do many varied sport-like tasks (cycling, snowboarding, basketball, lacrosse, BBQing, drinking beer), I cannot be trusted with my own body to do things like walking or slowly rolling from point A to point B. It has become apparent in the last few years that I am much better off moving fast than I am at slow to moderate rates of speed.

On Monday, while taking my bike off the rack on top of my car, I managed to do it exactly wrong and I had the bike come tipping toward me. I caught it and kept it from falling (whew!), but managed to catch it just so and I crushed my right thumb, right on the knuckle where thumb meets palm. Ow. I have a nice bruise there.

Yesterday I rode my bike a lot (yay!) and after riding to and from work, then to Sarah’s house to teach her how to use her new ‘puter, I was rolling slowly away from her apartment when I realized quite late that I had a flat tire. In this case, “quite late” means “as I was falling.” I was trying to make a narrow 90 degree right-hand turn during this realization. Normally this is not difficult, but when your front tire is flat and you try to both accelerate slightly and put more weight forward (while on damp concrete) the bike will (gasp!) give way. As I’m feeling the bike slide out from under me and am crashing to the concrete, I think three things:

1. Oh shit.
2. My computer!
3. Oh shit, my computer!

Luckily my laptop was fine. (And thank you Sarah, for changing my flat with your Master Tech skills.) I did manage to smoosh the rest of my right hand up nicely. I’ve got a quarter-sized bruise on the top of my right hand, just between the tendons of the ring and pinky fingers. Let me tell you that fate and my hand are clearly trying to express something to me. I can’t tell if it’s “go faster” or “stop” so I’m just going to keep going. My bike commute today was without incident, so hopefully I won’t collect my third right hand injury until tomorrow.

File these under the Insult To Injury catagory: There was a guy standing in the street watching me as I skidded to a stop on my hip and hand. He kept asking me if I was OK. I replied that my pride was irreparably damaged, but I was otherwise fine. Also, I noticed today that I have cracked the right hood of my shifters. Bah. I shall disguise it tomorrow with black electrical tape.

ETA: I should also point out that over the weekend I put no less than three holes in my right hand. Two from assembling the new dresser (a giant splinter and a cut) and some mysterious cut between my index and middle knuckle that appeared Sunday-ish.