When I bought this bike, I had never ridden with clipless pedals, but Bobby at Palo Alto Bicycles assured me that I would not regret joining the proud ranks of the clipless crew. So I did. And I fell. At first, a lot.
My most spectacular fall was not my first. However, my first fall was the most terrifying. On the way to CalTrain one morning, I tipped over as I attempted to come to a halt at the intersection of Cesar Chavez and Guerrero. Kersplat! Right into the roadway when the folks on Cesar Chavez had a green light. I did indeed feel my heart stop for a moment.
The second and most spectacular fall took place about a month later in Palo Alto. I was rushing to make the evening train. I could hear it approaching. I still had about one football field to ride. I blasted up onto the sidewalk to save time, just as an elderly man coming toward me did the same thing. I veered to the right to avoid him, and he did the same, but rather slower, so we basically veered right toward each other, me at top speed. The train whistle was blowing, and in my mind's eye, all in consecutive little snapshots, I saw this old man get hit by me, fall, break his collarbone, enter the hospital, catch pneumonia, and die. The final clip was me at his funeral.
Did I hit him and make the train? Certainly not. I laid my own bike and self down, at top speed, on the sidewalk to avoid him. My bike skidded about ten feet and I skidded about five. My helmet broke the fall, but unfortunately, did very little to protect my legs, which I was immediately sure were in bad shape.
I missed the train. I waited for the next one, forty-five minutes later, with blood running down both legs and pooling in my socks and no band-aids with which to stop the flow.
With this initiation, I officially joined the proud ranks of San Francisco bicycle commuters.
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