My helmet saved me from a different kind of injury today. I was riding along next to a park when all of a sudden something smacked into my helmet from directly above. It scared the H-E-double-hockey-sticks out of me and rattled my head a little. I instantly noticed a baseball flying away from me into the brushes. It was probably a pop-fly since it had to have gotten past the fence and bleachers that seperated the road from the field. Several kids ran up to me as I skidded to a stop and apologised. Parents wanted to know if I was okay. I told them all I was fine and the kids went scurrying off to search for the ball. Aside from having things thrown at us by rednecks in lifted pickups or pidgeons who think we're a challenging moving target, I wonder what other things cyclists have had fallen on them while riding. Maybe if I ask around, someone will eventually relate a story about a meteorite.
On my ride today, I was passed by one of those construction trucks with a bunch of unsecured stuff in the bed. You know the type... usually there's a bunch of buckets and tools haphazardly thrown in the back. This one even had its liftgate down. Just after passing me, it hit a deep pothole. A whole toolchest flew off the back and came crashing down on the road spilling all sorts of tools and asundries all over. There were hammers, screwdrivers, SCREWS!, NAILS!, tape measures, etc... right in my path. I was doing about 22MPH and barely managed to swerve out of the way of the debris field. After clearing the hazard area, I tried to wave and yell at the driver to come back and pick up his stuff but he kept on going oblivious to the fact that he left behind probably a hundred dollars worth of tools on the road. It's too bad I was just into my ride and didn't want to carry around the tools otherwise I would have made off with some of it. Instead, I picked up as much as I could, rode to the nearest police station (1/2 mile), and handed it to the officer manning the desk. He asked me for the plate number but I was unable to catch it in time. I just gave the officer a description of the truck instead.
Well after three and a half days of walking around with a makeshift eyepatch (I cut up one of those airline sleep-masks you get on int'l flights) and my cycling sunglasses and generally looking like some weird extreme-sports sea-pirate, my eye suddenly got better. This morning it was still bothering me but by noon, I could hardly feel it and it's no longer light-sensitive. It's kinda weird also in that I had scratched it on Friday night but it was fine all Saturday until the sun started setting. Then all of a sudden it started hurting and stayed that way until earlier today when it almost as quickly went away.
A couple of days ago, I seemed to have scratched my left eye while taking out my contacts. Now it's sensitive to certain light levels which is to say that when ambient light levels fall below a certain threshold or rise above a certain threshold, my eye hurts like a "beach".
However, I have found that my Rudy Projects with the smoke grey lenses do normalise things enough for me to function throughout the day without pain... at least in my house. So here I sit in my house wearing cycling sunglasses. I had planned on doing a ride today with a friend but now I'm not so sure I'll go. I'm undecided as to whether I should sit around with an eyepatch or sleep to quicken the healing process or if it's okay to go about things normally as long as it doesn't hurt. The last time I did this, it took 3-4 days before it felt okay.
I got back from a two-day business trip last night and earlier today when I went to grab my bike from the garage, I was shocked to find that a whole family of baby spiders had built webs all over my handlebar. I hit them with the lysol in hopes of driving them off and then promptly began to clean off the webs and remaining spiders with a rag. It seems that spiders just love bikes because there are so many jutting parts in which to build webs across. It also doesn't seem like it takes them too much time (overnight) to take a liking to a sitting bike.