Hurting

Mixing up my route has kept things interesting on rides now that the weather is warming, the days are longer and I am able to be on my bike more.  I found a nice paved trail that I can take for some recovery during rides.  I was speeding down this trail the other day and stopped where it crossed a busy street to wait for traffic to clear.  When I had my chance to cross I gave one pedal stroke, stepped into my right pedal, thought I clipped in, fumbled, leaned left, panicked and dropped to the asphalt in the middle of the road.  Both lanes of traffic stopped.  I looked down, saw blood and hobbled across the street as quickly as possible. I really hope no one caught that with a smart phone.  I'll have to keep checking YouTube to make sure I don't suddenly appear. 

 Once I cleared the curb I assessed the damage and was happy to find that the worse thing injured was my ego.  Second was my body - scrapes on the left calf, abrasion down the right shin with a nice welt, sore hip and nothing more.  Third was my bike - scraped left pedal and minor damage to the left side of my saddle.  My seat post had turned slightly.  Overall, I just felt stupid more than anything.

I had been feeling great up until this point on my ride, but this incident really took all of the wind out of my sails.  I took the most direct route home and cut my losses, grateful that things had not been worse.  I had just enough time on the way back to figure out how I would reassure my wife that I was okay and that there was no need to worry about things when I ride.  Luckily, she was very understanding.  I realized later that I should have taken some pictures to document the event.  I am just about healed now and hopefully, there will not be another incident to report.