After a pretty adrenaline filled first date, where ‘John’ took me out for a spin around Suffolk on his sporty motorbike on a beautiful sunny day, a second date was suggested- but this time on my kind of bike- the leg-powered kind. I thought this was a great idea and suggested one of my favourite routes out to the seaside at Felixstowe and back- around 30 miles for the round trip.
Feeling in good spirits as I was feeling quite confident with my fitness and speed, we set off on the ring-road to get out of Ipswich. Now, on busy roads the cycle path sometimes winds from on the road to on the pavement and vice versa. I was going quite fast as I had chosen my racer that day and, cycling ahead of John, I came to a point where the cycle path changed to the pavement and steered to do just that…. the trouble was I was going fast and hadn’t steered left enough so the wheel kind of slipped on the lowered (not enough!) pavement and threw me off course and in the path of a concrete bollard. I righted myself and half breathed a sigh of relief before….*BANG, CRASH, WALLOP* my pedal clipped the bollard and threw me backwards off my bike, hitting my head hard against the pavement (Thank God for my helmet!) and skidding along the concrete on my back. Well, as John was riding behind me he got to see the whole calamity!
Once I realised I was a bit sore but otherwise okay, I was horrified that I’d crashed so horribly on such a crucial date! Much to my despair, John was laughing his head off (although trying to hide it at least) at the whole sorry incident whilst he asked if I was okay. Well, other than having the skin on my back scraped red raw in places (It was summer and my vest had ridden up) and obviously being extremely shocked and embarrassed, what could I say but ‘Yeah, I’m okay! Let’s carry on’.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t a hit of a relationship and I never saw him again after that day!
JustineV