Paul's Page

Some may know that while I was living and working in Atlanta for about a year and a half I took a classes in a martial art called Cuong Nhu. Well,that time I spent there, which I loved, turned out to be time well spent this morning.

This morning I went for a bike ride with a friend of mine, Carrie, who I knew when I lived in downtown Chicago. We rode from the Art Museum in Philadelphia, the building behind the famous steps that Rocky runs up in the movie, up north along the Schuylkill river to a bridge and then started heading back (it was going to be about an 8 mile round trip from the museum up to a bridge and back). As we were heading back we were riding along and had just come out from under another bridge and up in front of us I saw two people: one woman walking on the right hand side of the path and a roller blader who seemed a little shaky that was going to try and pass this person walking on the right. As it would turn out the roller blader did try and pass this walking woman and as fate would have it I would be passing the pair of them at about the same time. Being that there was definitely not going to be enough room for all three of us on the path at once, since I was on my mountain bike, I decided I would swerve over onto the nice grass shoulder on the left and pass the both at the same time.

Now my time spent riding paths all around the world has taught me that as a courtesy you should say something like “on your left” or “excuse me” or maybe even ring a bell, should you have one, when you are passing someone or another rider on these kinds of paths. In this instance I decided to go with a quiet “on your left” just loud enough to be heard and not scare this roller blader since she seemed a little shaky. Usually what normally happens is the roller blader just stands up straight and coasts, well this woman definitely heard me and then definitely got scared. INSTEAD of just staying where she was at and acknowledging my presence she started to flail about and suddenly jumped to her LEFT into the grass.

Please refer to the end of the earlier paragraph where you can read that this was my decision already to go into the grass and I guess you can figure out the outcome.

She swerved to the left at literally at the exact moment our shoulders were passing. We collided and my bike of course went down and she of course was spun to the ground also. (this is where the title to this post comes from) I dont know really what it looked like because to me of course everything happend at light speed but the next thing I remember is I’m going down, then I’m rolling over my right shoulder to my left hip and then I’m standing again, I executed a perfect Cuong Nhu front roll. I was instantly standing and walked back over to the woman who had knocked me off of my bike. She informed me that she had done something like this previously back in the late 90′s and had ended up dislocating her shoulder, and ripper her bursar bag (sp?) and had nerve damage. I’m of course going “OH SHIT” I’ve broken this woman again and am going to end up in a law suit because we both made mistakes. As it turns out this woman was okay and was totally cool about it. She sat for a couple of seconds and we all talked and she said it was okay to go on. She was taking off her roller blades as we rode away and was going to walk to her car about 50 feet away.

Now of course it freaked me out a little bit later when we were riding down the path and two ambulances screamed up the road we were riding next to but I’m going with the fact that they definitely weren’t for this woman and someone more injured than she, god I hope so!

So here it is again, THANK YOU Cuong Nhu! Besides what seems to be a small bruise on the inside of my right leg, probably from an impact with my bike frame, I have come out of this accident without any instant injuries. I probably will hurt all to hell and back tomorrow but that is tomorrow and what Ibuprofen is for, some of which I’ve already taken

Have a nice day everyone.