I took a stinging nettle to my right heel yesterday evening, just where the scar is from my slice-on-the-bed incident. Let me inform you, that plant lives up to its name. It should be called "omg don't ever accidentally briefly touch this plant just trust me don't do it stay awayyyyyy" - that would be even more accurate.
I suddenly feel like I have started something in the middle and am struggling to figure out what the hell is going on so I can try to catch up, and in the meantime, I'm just faking it and hoping eventually it will turn out real. As though me trying to learn how to ride my new bike, clipless pedals and all, is a giant metaphor for my life. I get going for a couple blocks or so, and I know I look like a total badass on my sweet retro road bike, and I feel like I know what I'm doing and I look like I know what I'm doing, and then I get to an intersection, and have to stumble off in an undignified and sometimes painful fashion and walk for a few blocks, until there aren't many people to see me try and awkwardly get back on and get started again.
I haven't been good at bikes in a loooong time, if I ever was. I have a very clear memory of remembering to brake at the last minute and stopping with my front wheel an inch away from falling in the duck pond at Westmoreland Park, just when I had recently gotten to a point where I felt a mastery of no training wheels. I was ... nine? ten? Only now, a decade and some odd later, instead of the duck pond, it's traffic, and kids with grandparents, and stone retaining walls, and hot dog carts, and construction workers, and that curb, and trees, and more retaining walls, and I have to remember to relax my grip on the handlebars because I'm holding too tight, but don't relax too much or I'll forget to steer and end up in the duck pond.
Yeah, that Giant Metaphor of my Raleigh Technium TriLite.
My polka-dotted skateboard helmet is securely fastened.
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