I thought it might be fun to visit a few stories from back when I was in college. The first one I’ll share was a pretty embarrassing experience I had trying to go down stairs on a bike. I went to school a long way from home, and I didn’t have a car. I did purchase a fancy new mountain bike just before leaving for school. The bike as my primary form of transportation around town and all over campus.
As a freshman I lived in the dorms and had a meal plan to eat in the cafeteria. Rick’s College at the time was only a 2 year junior college, so a large percentage of the student population were freshmen. The cafeteria was a popular location around meal times.
One day right after lunch on a beautiful day I left the lunch room rushing off to class or somewhere. There was quite a bit of foot traffic all around the building. I had ridden by bike, and parked right next to the upper doors to the building. The fastest way to where I was going was to take the stairs. I had ridden stairs enough that I was comfortable making my way down them even with other people around.
General Lack of concern for others
I imagine some of the people walking may have felt like I was being dangerous riding close to them as the walked. There were times when I would be riding along the sidewalk, and try and go around people next to a chain link fence. The space would be narrow enough that I would have to ram my handle bars right into the fence and bounce off the fence popping out in front of the person I was passing. My handle bars had bar ends that made it so they wouldn’t get caught in the fence. In case you are wondering, I never hit anyone in the process, but I do think a few people were a bit startled at the maneuver.
Going down
Back to the main story. As I started down the stairs things were going great. About half way down the the first flight of stairs I could feel my glasses start slipping. I tried to look up a bit, but I also needed to watch where I was going. A moment later my glasses fell right off. I reacted with cat like reflexes, and let go of the handle bars (yes I was still in the middle of the stairs) and caught my glasses. About the same time I caught the glasses my front wheel, no longer having anything controlling it, turned to the side and I was flipping over the handle bars.
It must have been quite the site as I rolled down the steps tangled in my toe clips. When I came to rest at the bottom of the steps my arm hit the ground and my glasses fell out of my hand. They landed a couple of feet away. Several kind students rushed to see if I was going to be alright. Lucky for me the most serious injury I had was to my pride. Several places were in some pain, but nothing was broken. I quickly got untangled, grabbed my glasses and took off as quickly as I could.
