The ride out or near death experiance

(The Mailbox building near Gas St Basin)








On Monday we decided the pair of us to go out on the bikes, good idea to get out and practice for our marathon biking holiday where we intend to cycle all the way down to London using the Grand Union Canal.

So having checked the bikes over we set off a nice easy couple of miles through the park and we are on the canal. It was nice day sunny with the odd shower thrown in, it is after all April.

A couple of miles down the tow path towards Birmingham City centre partner does her normal thing and catches hold of my arm and gets a free tow.

Does it feel much different she asks, well I said, yes it actually throws me off balance quite a bit, surely not says she.

Let me try pull you, so she comes up my right hand side, and as she passes me I catch hold of her arm, this throws her completely off balance, our handle bars clash, my front wheel turns sideways and we both go head first over the front of our bikes onto to the hard gravely tow path, its not wide a tow path about a metre at best and as I am passing through the air expecting this is going to hurt real bad. I still had hold of partners arm she was heading for the water so I pulled her back towards the tow path and on top of me.

With a thud we hit the ground and what seems like minutes we pick ourselves up,
Any injury’s, we check ourselves over, partner got off lightly with a graze on the palm of her hand both elbows grazed and bruised knees, I look at my self both knees grazed and bleeding, took the skin off my knuckle and a grazed right elbow.

We quickly look round “DID ANYONE SEE US” there was no-one about so aching we got on the bikes and carried on.

By the time we had reached the City Centre my hand wouldn’t stop bleeding, the blood trail must have been for miles.

(Edgebaston tunnel about 100 yards long)

Lets stop and have a coffee and maybe I can use the toilet to clean up I said, so we went off down Colmore Row to Starbucks we ordered coffee and I asked if I could use the toilet, “we don’t have one in this shop” was the answer, well do you have a first aid kit I could use then please, I asked, "Oh have you hurt yourself" the young assistant replied the blood was streaming from my hand and covered most of it.

Here she says use the sink and points me to the back of the counter where I clean up the blood from my hand elbow and knees, the first aid kit was brought out and a suitable plaster was found for my knuckle, I thanked them for helping me and left.

We drank our coffee on a bench in St Phillips square and laughed at what we had done vowing never again to act like children in what could have been very serious we should act our ages and not the shoe size.

On the way back home we stopped and had a burger outside one of the many canal side bars that are down there it was delicious and cycled back home.

All in all we had had a really good ride out and on checking our speedo’s we had done 20 miles.

I will wait till I stop aching before I go out again.