I’m kicking my own ass for not having taken a picture of my face when it was smeared with the black of the street! However, all is not lost…

I am on an extremely short jaunt (about five blocks) to meet my amigo, Saul, at the Utrecht store on Mass. Ave. I am fresh off Spanish class and it is a really fucking nice night. I generally never ride bike with my mp3 player on my person, but a mere five blocks stands between myself and Utrecht.

I deftly navigate my bike between a jam of slow moving cars and accelerate down the hill on Bow St. Tim Harrington, of Les Savy Fav, is hollering in my ears as I lean forward and pedal hard. I approach Mt. Auburn and see nothing but green encouraging me to hit the left at a good clip (both streets are one way). I’m rolling at about 20 miles per hour, and as I hit the corner, I shift my weight hard to the left.

Many of you know that I am riding a fixed gear bike–one of the dangers being pedal strike (my pedals do not coast–if I lean too sharply into a turn, my pedal will contact the pavement at the bottom of its stroke).

As my left pedal cracks the blacktop, my bike whips itself out from under me. Before I realize where I’m headed, my left thigh and face impact the pavement. I’m up quickly and notice that my glasses are lying about eight feet ahead of me on the road. I rush forward, scoop up my glasses and then hop back and slide my bike onto the shoulder. There is no more Les Savy Fav.

Cars roll past as a pedestrian asks if I’m okay. I stammer, “I think so?” as I put my glasses on. I feel my already bigish lips becoming even more pronounced as I ride my bike at a limping pace the final two blocks to Utrecht. Saul isn’t there yet, so I pull my mp3 player out of my pocket and try turning it on–it doesn’t work anymore.

Saul rides up on this sweet little chopper (not the kind we’re used to–this one is cute and nice looking!) and inquires as to my safety. I tell him I’m okay, and then he explains that the black smudged on my nose and smeared into my lips make me look like a beaten clown with half a makeup job.

The aftermath: About ten seconds after scrubbing soap into my face, I am pissed that I didn’t have Saul snap a shot–I look truly ludicrous! I am still shaky and shell shocked, and am worthless for about an hour. After I mellow out, Saul and I rehearse our lines for a while (Saul is being a real champ and is donating his time and brainpower to a series of Telemusicvision PSAs). Before I leave, I decide to see if my mp3 player is truly dead (I have some files that I want to drop on Saul’s computer). After about two minutes of pressing buttons and poking the reset switch with a needle, I settle on pronouncing my faithful perhipheral dead. Literally right before I stow the player back into my bag, I give the power button a final try and the device lights up! So I transfer the files, and lazy back home on my bike (the night was really too nice to do otherwise).

In the end, I’ve got a scraped mp3 player, one tiny nick on one lens of my glasses, better defined lips, a rip in my best pair of jeans, and an mp3 player shaped bruise on my left thigh. Not too bad, all things considered (click on the thumbnails to see larger photos).