How do I explain the amount of stupid? No….seriously–my stupid, it burns. One week ago tonight I was sick, not stupidly sick–just a cold. You know, just sick enough that the throat hurts, you have snot and aches and everything is poopy. You can tell when I am have a cold because I tend towards dramatic noises along the lines of, “I am dying!” or “please kill me!” or my personal favorite – the dying cow noise, “uuweeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”.
Now, when I am in any true danger of death you will hear me going on and on about how, “I am fine” and I will even try to make you feel better about how I am so incredibly fine. Yeah. I think it just furthers my evidence that that rush of panic most people get just calms me the fuck down. So, fast forward from Friday to Monday night and I felt SO. MUCH. BETTER.  It was so nice not to feel crappy any longer. I knew I had tuesday off of work (Thanks to all of my service friends and family for much more than getting me a day off of work) so I thought I would finally dredge the long-term mullings out of my brain and into the real world.
and it went REALLY well–until it didn’t.
and when it didn’t? it REALLY didn’t.
So, have ya’ll ever heard of bike-joring? Probably not. But, you have probably heard of dog-sledding. Well, remove the snow, remove the sled and insert a bike and you get the gist. It’s one of those things us crazy dog people think about–especially when my lovely athlete of a dog looks at me, a couch potato of a person, with a longing to run that just about breaks my heart.
Now before you think I am a complete idiot who didn’t research the heck out of this crap before beginning this little adventure – I’m not. I’m more like the complete idiot who dismissed one wee little component because it seemed like a small risk (think Hindenberg – well, sure…hydrogen is incredibly flammable but what are the chances??).  So, on Monday night I put Herbert into his little harness, attached him with an appropriate amount of rope and bungee to the front of the bicycle and off we went to go around the block. Keep in mind, at this point I did NOT have my phone and I wasn’t even concerned about not having my phone because this was going to work! it was going to be awesome! Herbert the wonder pup was going to get to RUN HIS HEART OUT all the while assisting to drag my non-athletic-butt up the challenging parts – – IT WAS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!!
and it WAS!! At least the first half of the block was a freaking DREAM. I pedalled, he pulled, we were ROCKING.
And then I got too confident (*on the Hindenberg* sure!!! I don’t see lighting a bonfire as causing any undue safety concerns…..[please note, that isn’t what actually happened on the Hindenberg; I am utilizing hyperbole] On the slight downward hill Herbert slowed down and I sped up and the bungee/rope met the front tire and I learned how to fly for a very short distance with a rather unfortunate sudden stop.
Weeeeeeeeee-Thud-FML.
Now, for those of you who have ever worked with dogs you know the key to an epic fuck up like this is to make sure they aren’t freaked the fuck out and I realized at that point that 1. Herbert needed to know everything was okay and that he was a GOOD DOG! [because he was, he didn’t panic – he didn’t like that he was attached to the thing that tried to kill the FoodLady, but he was okay] 2. I didn’t have my phone. 3. The chain was off my bike and the fender was bent into the tire in a fun way. 4. I was going to feel pain in a few minutes and was about a 10 minute walk from the house. well, fuck.
So, I decided to walk the bike home. Before that could happen I had to unbend the fender from the blessedly unpunctured tire with my hands. It should be noted that although I knew my hands were damaged I wasn’t yet feeling the pain [*grunts* animal wounded–must escape wounding to survive, pain keeps animal from escaping – brain block pain – weeeeee!!!!!!] but right after I bent that fender off of the tire I saw the shiny stars and birds flying around my head.  Once the shinies and the birdies came the pain hit and instead of casually walking my bicycle homeward I heavily plopped my ass on the bike and performed that ungainly roll/walk thing normally performed by toddlers on their play bicycles and uncerimoniously dragged myself home with some bleedy road rash on my hands and arms and some serious OW in the bodular area. When I got home (around the block without injuries – 10 minutes; with injuries 3.284 years) I staggered into the yard and the boyfriend could hear the snot-cry-ow-fml-voice and asked how it went (I would be remiss not pointing out that he was against this experiment from the beginning and was very helpful with the first aid and the helping and such – even if he did end up doing the “I was right” dance when I was better) and all I could say was, “it went REALLY well; until it didn’t” before stopping the bleeding, digging out pieces of gravel, taking so much of the advil, embracing the ice packs, and lying very. very. still.
I have some impressive bruising, but for the most part I am damn lucky to be doing just fine. I’m not giving up on this bike-joring plan, I’m just going to more forward with more care and install a doo-dad that keeps the rope/bungee from getting tangled in the front wheel and add in some wrist protectors as well as a helmet. I am very lucky…please learn from my mistakes and think this crap through before attempting. 😉
**kisses**

See that pole above the tire? Yeah, I shoulda had that…..