Help! I’ve Fallen Under My Bike and I Can’t Get Up!

The last day or so, I’ve felt a bit like my bike has fallen on me, and I can’t get up.

Note: I strategically placed my front wheel on top of me in the following picture; this is not a “Christine” kind of thing where my bike has an “evil mind of its own.” Well, just in case you were wondering! :-) Though, while trying to get under my wheel, the gears hit the back of my head, and by the way, that hurts like hell!




It’s been a long five, jeez, almost six months, and I’ve tried to stay positive. I loved working, and I also love, as I’ve written here, the time off. But every now and then, I have a day like yesterday, and it sets me back a tad. In a nutshell, two cars were damaged needlessly.

When I was out riding my bike today, which stopped being exercise three months ago and is now spiritual healing for me, I thought about my life. Wow, that sounds so, err, trite. I tell myself, among other things…

“You’ll get a job soon.”
“Everything is going to be okay.”
“This too shall pass.”

Tangent story: I have a good friend, and he and I have been through a lot together these last 2+ years. During that time, he lost three good friends, I lost my job, and, well, other things, too, which I don’t think I need to elaborate on, because most of you know my life story by now anyway! If not, tune in for the TV movie of the week, starring Meg Ryan, yes, of course, BEFORE the bad plastic surgery.

But, you know what? To me, trite is the new truth. You have to believe that everything is going to be okay and that it’ll pass, because you know what? It does, eventually. And no matter what hit you take, financially or emotionally, things will be all right again. Things are cyclic, and I still believe “What goes around comes around.” Ah, I’ve now added cliché on top of trite! Good for me; it’s like a word sundae. Where’s the cherry on top?!

After I reached Nashua, NH, the 12.5 mile mark, I began to think about all the good stories I had written about this time off. And, while I’ve really tried to focus on the good, every once in a while the bad sneaks in. And, I feel badly about feeling bad. Um, I can’t believe I just wrote that.

But, when I passed the huge clock in Pepperell center on the way back, I realized that everyone's life is a story. I have said previously I find a story in everything and on every day. Usually, I find good stories, but I have posted “bad” stories here. Well, they have been stories about losses (my Mom, Dad, and Doug), which aren’t really bad; they’re just about what happens in life; shit happens, and, well, so does death.

One’s life story is about good AND bad stories. You have to live both, knowing you’ll survive even the bad. But, it is important to remember to let the bad story be Reader’s Digest in length and not be War and Peace.......and get the best of you.

How a Bad Story Can Be a Good Story Later in Life Tangent: One of my friends in the band, Any Trouble, told me a story about staying at a hippy commune on Anglesea in tents, where they had all the lentils they could eat. It was their "camping tour" of Wales in their early days. At the commune, they were menaced by a bull early one morning. "Don't worry about him; he's a beautiful bull!" was shouted to them by a French girl staying at the commune who saw them cowering in their tents while 5 feet of a sweating, snorting, angry bull charged around the field. Once out of their tents, they drove to the next town and plastered the place with posters. This was the morning of their gig in Rhyl; unfortunately, they didn't notice that they were putting their posters over posters for Doctor Death's, a local wrestler, event on the same night. Just as they were about to go on stage, the place was overrun by lunatics with baseball bats. While on stage, the landlord said, "Don't worry lads; just keep playing. Me and the boys will keep 'em off you!" Luckily, a few locals fought them off while they did the only sensible thing and ran away.

I love that story. At the time, it was probably a bad one for him as far as the band went, but in the general scheme of things life now, well, it’s a good story.

I hope that my bad story about the cars becomes a good one several years from now, but until then, I lived it, I’m moving past it, and I look forward to the next good story that tomorrow brings. (I have a job interview!)

It’s trite, but it’s true; keep smiling, even if you’re stuck under a bike tire or being run out of town by Doctor Death, and hold on tight, when living the bad story, to the things you love the most like your bike, your guitar, your mutable arrays, your "that cat", or most importantly, your best friend, who you know looks abfab and then some in an apron. <3