the what
On Saturday I royally smashed myself up in a bike accident near my apartment. See the thing is I have 2 bikes - one regular sized "utility" bike (those standard asian bicycles with the deep seat and the basket for doing grocery runs or just for long-haul treks in the city), and then the "P-Cycle", which is a tiny, almost scooter-ish little bike with 14" rims, designed for short-haul urban biking. The P-cycle style bikes are very much a Japan thing, I've never seen them for sale in North America. The frame is much smaller than even a little BMX joint, and the center of the frame has a locking pin which can be taken out, whereupon the bike can be folded in half and brought on a train or subway. I bought the P-cycle about 2 years ago, and got a lot of use out of it, but after I left our old apartment at Sekime, I hadn't been using it for some time and I simply left it in the bike dock of the building, not really caring if the cops confiscated it or if someone stole it.
Fast forward seven months later to the present. The gears on my standard bike gave out on me, rendering it uselesss, so I went back to my old apartment building and found, as I hoped, the old P-cycle still there in the bike dock, kinda rusting away.I figured it'd be good for the time being, until I had enough funds to either get my bike fixed or buy a new one.
The Pcycles are zippy little bastards and high manueverable - really good for navigating through crowded shopping arcades and narrow streets that are heavy with pedestrian traffic. But they are have a tendency to be poorly balanced, and on certain surfaces, or if you try to go up any kind of curb or enbankment at an angle rather than straight on, they are infamous for suddenly sliding or skidding out from underneath you. (There is a pretty popular picture among my facebook profiles pics of me in an earlier accident where the bike did just that, but at the time I was drunk and riding it inside a shopping mall, so this was more of a "funny" accident.)
What I failed to pick up on was the fact that the front tire of the P-cycle had worn down to a flat rubber surface in certain areas, leaving no treading whatsoever. So on Saturday, all it took was a smooth polished concrete tile surface, and some water on the street to cause the damn thing to completely lose its grip and slip out from under my right side as I was gliding, sending my ass to the curb. I fell to the left, and me eye socket connected with the top of a waist-high metal fence pole, which broke the fall before I landed on my wrist, spraining it pretty badly.
I mean, I was stunned for a second, but it was an accident that I was able to get up and ride away from.
But I got a mother of a black eye out of it, and I'm lucky I didn't lose my eyeball. Anyway, I'm all bandaged up from it, and half to wear an eyepatch until the discoloration dissappears from my eye. Right after the accident, the swelling was so bad that my left eye was swollen shut, but it died down within 48 hours and now there is only trace amounts of swelling left. But as per any black, the purple bruise actually deepened and darkened in color. I am no stranger to black eyes, and I know it usually takes upwards of a week or two before the color really goes away, but I am hoping to have this patch off before the end of the week.
I'm not used to wearing an eyepatch (this is a also a Japanese thing, just as people wear facemasks when they are sick, even slight eye trauma is cause for wearing an eye patch in public).
So yeah anyway I'm all bandagy and hospitol-patient looking now, which earns me a lot of sympathy hugs from girls. So hey its not all bad.
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But oh yeah in completely unrelated news, not only did I get my mic stand and pop filter back from Pauley, but since he is going home to New York next week, he graciously gave me his Korg X-2 music work station and synthesizer, which is a MAJOR piece of equipment. I am pretty humbled by recieving such a present, and man does this thing ever kick ass.