Watching the election was making me nuts, so I went for a Thursday morning bike ride.
The weather was beautiful. I met a friend, got out of the apartment, and spent the first part of the morning doing exactly what I needed to do. Ride the bike. Stop looking at election results. Look at literally anything else.
The photos start normally. Two bikes. Blue sky. Empty roads. Fall color. A few very good views and the standard bike-ride selfies.
Then they change.
There is a close-up of the left side of my face with blood and dirt around my eye. Another one shows the scrape running down toward my jaw. I am smiling in both of them because apparently that was my immediate response to hitting the ground hard enough to damage my helmet.
I did not write down a useful crash report. I only described it the next morning as “a bad crash.” The rest of the photos show a neck brace, the ER, and my helmet sitting on a metal counter with a chunk ground out of it.
I had been trying to take a break from one stressful thing and found a much faster way to create another.
The next morning I owed someone a reply about a product and technology conversation. I opened with an apology for the delay and explained what had happened. Then I added, “apologies for any concussion typos :).”
Under that I pasted my Calendly link.
That part is painfully consistent. Get hurt. Make a joke. Reschedule the meeting. Keep moving.
I was lucky enough to be sending the email myself the next morning. The election was still not settled. Apply still had work waiting. My face looked terrible, my helmet was finished, and I had picked a very bad morning for a stress-relief ride.