Mastodawn

i read kierkegaard's "fear & trembling" in my early 20's and i was very moved by his treatise on abraham and god-ordered sacrifices in general.

he describes abraham as a person who falls down and gets back up every time yet - and this is the difference - falls and gets up with such grace that it looks effortless. he says he could never be this man.

this impressed the hell out of me. i so wanted to be this man. and a year later, i got my chance.

(apparently i'm writing my memoirs now)

after my first job's company moved, i would now find myself on a bicycle passing a mcdonald's on my way home every day. and so i would one day get in there, order two big macs and a milkshake as takeaway, and then bring the bag to my bike and wonder how i would actually drive the bike now with the bag in one hand.

so i figured heck let's drive it anyway. so with one hand incapacitated, i judder the handlebar, and to make matters worse i am in a pedestrian zone.

(cont)

before you know it i'm trying to evade people and my bike drifts and the front wheel approaches some steps. to not bump into them i pull the front brakes, and the whole bike topples forward with me on it, while i'm never letting go of the bag.

from the moment i knew i would crash to the crash itself, i had enough time to think about how i would take it, so that as soon as my body comes to rest, i go "tadaa!" at the numerous onlookers.

so that was my rendition of kierkegaard's abraham.

but what i had failed to do back then was to ask myself what led to this accident in the first place.

neither did i ask myself this whenever i retold the incident, so pleased i was with the story

had i asked myself this, i would have discovered that missing access to the rear brake would invariably cause such accidents, so that 20 years later, when my then-bicycle's rear brake *actually* failed, i would have expected this to happen to me again, rather than being utterly surprised by it.

Bernd Kilga Mar 13

@lritter Sometimes the best thing you can do is just survive. You just don't always have the time to learn from it.

But you did now, so that fatal crash in 20 years? Averted!

Daniel Ludwig Mar 13

@console @lritter Well, aaactually... ;) now you'd not be surprised anymore, but to *avert* it, you should train dismount-gracefully-over-handlebar-somersaults.

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇨🇦)Mar 14

@lritter of course, the problem seems obvious in hindsight as you probably should not have never cycled in the first place, but wrap the top of the bags around the steering handle bar grips and press your palms against them so that your fingers can still reach the breaks - and if you had only one bag, then it shpuld be held on the side of the front break, not the rear brake

rich Mar 14

@serapath @lritter all bags could have quite easily been held between one's teeth, freeing both hands (which should ofc be crossed *before* placing on handlebars, for nightmare difficulty)

𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓪𝓽𝓱【ツ】☮(📍🇨🇦)Mar 14

@rich @lritter

makes sense - for anyone who wanta to try this at home, here is a recommended exercise for improving your grip stength