Continuing Education

I guess there are two methods to understanding walls. One is to read about them -- their variations and purposes -- and go on a series of field trips to see them, touch them and compare them. The other way to understand them is to run into one and work it all out in recovery. I endeavor to someday engage in an education that embraces the first methodology.

In this picture I present evidence of my second-method approach to a study of pavement while on a Sunday afternoon bicycle ride through an affluent residential section of Pasadena, near the Rose Bowl. A woman ahead of me on a bike, head plugged tight with a music playback device, turned sharply left into me as I tried to pass wide. I was going 22 mph on an 18 pound bike. I weigh 158. Her bike was easily 40 pounds, she was about my weight and her speed was close to 4 mph. For extra credit, whose kinetic energy, displaced, will lead them to chaos faster?

I have previously discovered that gravity affects the slow and stupid in a different way than it does the fast and alert. Slow and stupid people are bound by a different set of natural laws designed to protect them in case they may be bearing seed relevant to our future. Apparently nature does not believe that stupid proceeds from stupid but is meted out on a case by case basis. Whatever. Her left handlebar caught my right handlebar just enough to turn my front wheel hard to the right and I went down on my helmet and left shoulder.

I am now studying "separated shoulder, type III".

At the time, I could neither discharge a firearm, throw a knife, or operate a garrote for 4 weeks, so I was the sole of politeness and courtesy to all I met during that time.