Down the road, down to the road, down that road again!

22.9.10
Ireland
Killarney: Ring of Kerry

You know that old saying, the one appearing in children's rhymes, which runs something like: "You only live once, and you don't live until you die, and when you die you realize you haven't lived. That's life." That pretty much sums up nothing about today, but might help capture a certain mood that wouldn't otherwise be apparent. The mood is a sense of irony, an ability to see both the wonderful and the terrible in something and keep on going in spite of (or due to) that knowledge.

What happened that made me think of death and its certain inevitability and, at the same time, life and its absurdity? I fell. Riding at 30 km/h, I fell off Gitane and skidded for a few meters before stopping in a heap of mangled bike and bloody Bob. You see, when a bicycle rusts, its components weaken considerably. And when those parts fail, things tend to snap completely off. Consider a parallel but highly related thought, which is that when a bike loses the ability to steer - specifically when the handlebars begin to operate separately from the front wheel -, you loose all sense of control and begin shouting things like, "Holy shit!" and "Oh my God!" Then you crash, and the whole time you know it is coming, like a far-off freight train barreling down the only tracks around, upon which you happen to be standing - or, rather, to which you happen to be bound by collar and chain. Simultaneously, however, it is both a terrifying and funny feeling, one that you could almost laugh at in the moment (if you weren't screaming, that is). I mean, it must have looked very amusing, seeing, as my dad had put it, someone surfing on his bike down a mountain road in Ireland. I was surprised to learn that Ireland has a booming surfing community, but I had no clue anyone took it to the streets. And the moment after the crash - once I jumped to my feet and continued walking briskly down the mountain, determined to get where I was going - I felt my chest swelling with elation and my mind with utter giddiness. I had just survived a crash in a foreign country, and I didn't care that my bike was in three pieces! I was free from that deathtrap, finally rid of my albatross (thanks, Sammy C.).

And the silver lining? Surely, just being elated does not equate to the antithesis of death, even though the momentary rush of pleasure at being alive was overpowering and intoxicating. No, the blackberry of this thornbush, to convert a popular saying to Irish and turn it on its head, is that we had a wonderful day in spite of (or due to) the crash: a lovely lady named not Rita but Sabina picked us up in her van a mere 5 minutes postcrash and brought us into her town, Kenmare. She and her partner, Andrew, took care of us throughout the day, immediately carting us to the doctor, then bringing us to the market for dinner supplies, next to the bike shop where the poor selection of bikes made me turn down all offers to the chagrin of the salesman, and finally around part of the Ring and to their home. It was a wonderful time spending the day with two genuine people who clearly love life.

But the true silver lining is that we heard Alanis Morissette's "Ironic" on the way home, citing the good advice that [I] just didn't take (and who would've thought, it figured?), no doubt prophesying 14 years ago the words of the bikesmith cautioning me aout my handlebars being set too high. But it was all worth it, in the End.