THE CRUSHING GRIP OF SOBRIETY or Why I'm Pretty Sure Ward Tefft Is Trying To Kill Me. Part The Second

I arrived at the chill spot with a 40 of high life, a book to read, and some soaking wet clothes that I laid on the porch in the sun to dry. OK, I kept my pants on. Inside there were four chill BMX dudes from St. Louis, who were completely engrossed by the menu screen of an FBM bike DVD (I'm looking it up and I believe it is titled Gypsy Caravan) which I found odd as there was neither sound or video looping on the screen, just an image of a fuckload of people in front of a van. An image is worth a thousand words, sure, but really? I suppose this tells you just how chill the chill spot was (and I will try to stop using the word chill so often, I swear) and ditto for the dudes. In fact, the chilling was so hard that they didn't seem to even know that it had rained, much less that it was now over. We shot the shit for a while about important, hard hitting topics such as where the river is and where to get some whiskey -- tangenting into a discussion of how the ABC laws are seemingly different everywhere you go. They left me to my book and beer -- presumably to get the aforementioned whiskey and then go to the aforementioned James River -- and shortly thereafter Ward and Curtis arrived, followed shortly by Shelley, her sister Erin, and a few other people whose names unsurprisingly escape me (I really am HORRIBLE with names, but I digress) Ward, Curtis and I sat and made up funny misspellings of band names for the set time sheets (exemplorum gratiis: Strike Anywho, Nun More Black, No Fiends) and had a few beers. And but so I end up volunteering to help score manifests (which are the sheets of paper that contain all the places to go and things to do and so forth for the Scavenger hunt teams, if ya didn't know) at Alley Katz for the first day's end.

NOW, THE PART WHEREIN I SEVERELY INJURE MYSELF, AM TOO BUZZED AND WAY TOO EXCITED TO CARE, AND CONTINUE ON MY MERRY LITTLE WAY ANYWAYS, WHICH WAS WRITTEN UNDER THE WORKING TITLE "STITCHES ARE FOR BITCHES" AND WHOSE TITLE WILL PROBABLY TURN OUT TO BE ALMOST AS LONG OR LONGER THAN THE BODY TEXT ITSELF (NOT REALLY, BUT THIS IS STILL A DAMNED LONG SUBHEADER!) AND UPON REALIZATION OF WHICH (THE COMPARATIVE LENGTHS OF TITLE VS. TEXT) I WAS WELL AMUSED, AND HOPE YOU WILL BE TOO. ALSO CONSIDERED WERE "FUCK BYRD STREET" AND "NOW I REALIZE WHY YOU SHOULD TEST THE BRAKES ON A BIKE *BEFORE* YOU RIDE IT SOMEWHERE"

Now, my bicycle caught a flat tire sometime Wednesday night, and I have no money to fix it until this upcoming Friday. This was a big reason why I had originally decided to go a house show with my friend instead of the show at Alley Katz, but now I figured I would catch a ride with someone driving and then walk to Couch Heaven from Alley Katz. I helped score the manifests last year when I discovered that the rest of my scavenger hunt team had bailed on me; I had a great time. Unfortunately (for reasons more than pure laziness on my part, as you will soon find) there was no room in the truck to catch a ride, so I either asked to borrow a bike or was offered one to ride; the details are relatively unimportant and my memory starts getting a little fuzzy right around here. Point is, I get on my (borrowed) bike and start riding out of Oregon Hill, trying to decide which way to bike to Shockoe Bottom. The options I considered are depicted below. (the image is a link to a Google map, so open it up!)

GOOGLE MAP OF MY ROUTES

Everyone got their map open? Good! Now, My first consideration was The Going Around Your Ass To Get To Your Elbow Route, which although longer is a fun ride and I figured I might just see some other bikes going down to Alley Katz and so get to ride along with them. I was working on a bit of a timetable though, so the decision came to be between The Spring Street To Byrd Street Route and The Canal Walk Route. The CWR is the way i often get to the bottom, and is definitely my preferred method of going home from the bottom, as there is little in the way of hill climbing. However, next thing I knew, I had turned onto Spring and was sailing down the hill past what used to be a prison but is now a beautiful campus for the Ethyl Corporation or what-the-fuck-ever they call themselves now (NewMarket Corporation), up 2nd and onto Byrd. As a child, we used to call this particular hill Dead Man's Hill (no one said childern were terribly original!) and as our day care van would sail down the hill we would put our hands up as if riding a roller coaster. the hill is particularly in the back seat of a bumpy Econoline van or bumpier still school bus, but not unexceptionally in a car a thrilling little ride. On a bike it is breathtaking, exhilarating. And fucking terrifying when the traffic light right smack in the middle turns red on you when you're hauling major ass in high gear going down it. Reference again your maps. at the top of the block the light turns red, as noted by my marker 5TH ST LIGHT TURNS RED HERE. Now, lets try to understand a little bit about visual reaction time in humans. Exerpted below from the Wikipedia article entitled "reaction time"

Reaction time is quickest for young adults and gradually slows down with age. It can be improved with practice, up to a point, and it declines under conditions of fatigue and distractions.

RT is fastest when there is only one possible response (simple reaction time) and becomes slower as additional response options are added (choice reaction time). According to Hick's law, choice reaction time increases in proportion to the logarithm of the number of response alternatives. The law is usually expressed by the formula RT = a + blog₂(n + 1), where a and b are constants representing the intercept and slope of the function, and n is the number of alternatives.

Now, I had choices that I quickly, and possibly only somewhat consciously, considered:

1. SPEED THE FUCK UP, AND PRAY THAT THERE IS A GOD IN HEAVEN THAT GIVES A SHIT WHETHER I LIVE OR DIE(AND WOULD PREFER ME TO CONTINUE LIVING). Pros: This would be hella awesome fun if I made it through alive. Cons: I can't see the cross-street's traffic, forcing me to depend on either blind luck or a God I don't believe really cares one way or the other.
   
2. MAINTAIN SPEED, PRAY. Pros: None, really. At least, no unique pros. Cons: same as #1
3. SLOW DOWN AND APPROACH THE LIGHT WITH CAUTION. Pros: I would get the chance to see if any traffic would be going down the cross-street. Cons: I am still going so fast that knowing if there was traffic would likely still make little difference.
4. GRAB THE BRAKES. HARD. TRY TO STOP. Pros: I would actually be following the traffic laws. Least likelyhood of being hit by a car. Cons: I have not needed to use the brakes yet, really, and so I have no clue how sensitive they are.

I chose #4, however even the perhaps total one and one half second that transpired during which i saw the light change, considered my options, decided on a course of action, and squeezed the brake, i was already about halfway down the block (see map marker labeled I REACT AND HIT MY BRAKES HERE). And when I squeezed that brake, the cons of my chosen course became immediately apparent. I've flipped over my handlebars before; to call it an unpleasant experience is a bit generous. I can tell you that I have NEVER in my LIFE been as terrified as I was when the bike violently threw me to the ground with a shudder and I began to skid down the remainder of the block (m.m. I FINISH SLIDING ON MY FACE HERE) -- mostly on my face, specifically the right side of my chin, but I must have rolled over onto my back at some point, because my hands were not nearly as scraped up as I would have imagined, and my right shoulder was scraped pretty badly as well. It's an odd paradox that when traumatic injuries occur like this they always seem to both take place in slow motion and be over so quickly. What little I know about momentum tells me the whole ordeal likely was over in two seconds at the most. And when trying to recall what happened after the fact the whole sequence of events is a blur, but if I try to remember how it felt inside my head, try to recall my inner dialogue, it had to have been minutes, because I know two seconds is not nearly enough time for the "HOLY FUCKING CHRIST SHIT I'M GONNA DIE I'M GONNA FUCKING DIE FUCK!" tape loop in my head to repeat as many times as it did while I was airborne alone. And but so I stood up, looked upstreet for any cars behind me that I might need to immediately avoid for similar reasons to the cause of my wipeout in the first place, and located the bike before I realized I was injured; I dusted myself off, and as I wiped my shorts off I noticed a spot of blood. "No big deal, I probably just scraped my hand", I thought to myself (actually it was more like "meh, whatever, lets get the fuck outta here") and went to wipe the road grit out of my face. My hands had a chunk of beard hairs swimming in a pool of crimson; a leaky sanguine faucet dripping down my chin.

NEXT TIME IN PART THE THIRD ALL THE REST OF THE THINGS I PROMISED TO TALK ABOUT IN THE LAST POST BUT DIDN'T GET TO HERE BECAUSE I THINK I WRITE TOO MUCH. IN SHORT: ALLEY KATZ