This is my worst bike “incident”

I started thinking about my plans for the evening going down Townsend past the caltrain station. How I would get to the researcher meetup. How I would head up to Russian Hill. How I would find parking.

And then while going around 6 mph—

I suddenly found myself going right as if the wheels had taken a mind of their own. A crack in the road? Something wrong with my recently fixed bike? I weaved between two parked cars and fell on my right side.

A biker passed by and paused. He was a standard hipster with a beard and glasses. Are you ok?, he asked.

I brushed myself and steadied my bike. I responded in embarrassment, Yes.

I stood there in pain, checking myself. My knee. My leg felt scraped. But the most pain was how I fell. All I was happy about was how…if I was male, I would certainly be in more pain.

Then I checked my bike. What was wrong? Was it the back wheel that recently got completely replaced? I sighed testing my pedals. Maybe something was wrong. But then I realized that it wasn’t. It was just…a self-inflicted fall, perhaps caused by something in the road.

After 5 minutes of aching, I got back on my bike and slowly rode home.

Four hours later, I was at a friend’s birthday and someone jokingly put his hand on my knee in a show how much physical touch is hard for me. I yelped in pain, possibly scaring everyone at the bar.

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