I was heading home from Carrollton yesterday and was passing through Bowdon, Georgia as usual. A local citizen had parked one of those giant plastic garbage cans on wheels in the middle of the sidewalk in front of his/her residence for pickup.
Why was I riding on the sidewalk? That's because Georgia Highway 11 on the south end of Bowdon is very narrow and a main passageway of very large, lane-hogging trucks. I thought I'd be safer and attract less class hatred on the sidewalk. Wrong! I peddled around the big obstacle and hit a rut between the sidewalk and the lawn that was cleverly covered and disguised by recently fallen sycamore leaves. Over the bike went like the cover of a book closing on itself.
It's a good thing I was wearing my silly-looking helmet. The left side of my head hit the ground between the sidewalk and the highway hard.
A day later my left rib cage hurts and it's painful to do the normal things I so self-sufficiently have in the past done. This reminds me a little of Joe Simpson's last bicycle ride, the one before the surgical procedure that ended his life in around 1977-78. All he had was a hernia but somehow he died on the operating table in Birmingham. When it's time to duck out, then out you go, it seems.
It's good to feel capable and disorienting to suddenly feel not so capable.
But my nurse friend, Adam, tells me I will probably heal in a couple of days. I think it will take a couple of weeks. Maybe it's good to become acutely aware of normal human vulnerability.
Wouldn't it be great if the highways and roads of west Georgia and east Alabama were safer for bicyclists and the motorists who share thoroughfares with them? And if only sidewalks could be respected for their intended use instead of being cluttered with trash receptacles. I wouldn't even think of riding on sidewalks if adjacent roads were safer.
Steve Sedberry
Newell, Alabama