DANGER: Loose gravel

You would think the total numbness over most of my knees would serve as a good reminder as to the dangers of loose gravel on streets when hitting it at a high rate of speed on a bicycle. Despite flying over my handle bars when I was 12 and grating the skin on both knees down to something that resembled raw ground beef, I have yet to learn this lesson. I blame the poor learning curve on almost 20 years time and the inherent forgettable nature of numbness.

In my defense, Minnehaha Park is pretty damn dark at 9:30 and a dark road of loose gravel looks pretty similar to a dark road of tarred and packed gravel. Of course, when I say gravel, I mean tiny shards of broken glass engineered to look like gravel. Trust me and my bloodied thumb, Minneapolis streets are paved with little evil shards of glass waiting to collect the flesh of those going foolishly fast through a busy park at night. St. Paul streets on the other hand, are all made of a space age polymer engineered by NASA that contours to your body as you sleep... and they're paved with gold.

Once again my amazing karma/luck/guardian angel/spirit animal/whatever saved me from myself. I have two little scratches that only required the removal of a few bits of rock when I got home. It could have been much worse. If the minivan didn't slam on the brakes as it came barreling around the corner to see me and my bike prone in the middle of the street I would probably be typing this with a stick held between my teeth.



Nice bike ride otherwise. Saw a family of 7 raccoons, a great sunset over Lake Nakomis, a red fox, a big bright full moon, and a plethora of little bats zigzagging through the evening sky.