My fall

I was riding my bicycle this morning, when I suddenly lost control on a downhill and had a nasty fall. I scraped up my knee, both my palms, and my right arm. My knee is so swollen, it's twice its size and feels like I've had a novocaine injection.

The last time I fell off my bike was in 1990. I was going awfully fast down an extremely steep hill, when my bike flipped and I ended up sliding down the gravel-littered concrete on my stomach. It knocked the air out of me and I scraped my hands and cut my chin for the second time. I cried all the way home, and I'm not even sure how my friend who was riding with me at the time managed to get me and my bike home while trying to comfort me.

When I fell today, I only had myself to rely on and though I felt like getting up on my own was impossible, I did it. I got up and I walked all the way home--a distance no less than a mile-- on an excrutiatingly painful knee. The wire basket I'd installed this year, which I absolutely love, is now completely bent out of shape. I think that my bike is way out of alignment and needs some major work.

The good news is, I'm relatively OK, aside from a swollen knee and sore cuts and scrapes. It could've been worse, I guess, since I fell right before going under a bridge and could've hit my head on the concrete wall just barely a foot away.

I hope the swelling goes down and that the pain subsides for my trip to Mexico on Monday... I'd hate for my knee to feel this bad while on a 3-hour flight, and while trying to walk around as traveling is all about walking long distances. In the meantime, I've been trying to keep my leg straight and keep the bad scrapes untouched to avoid pain and possible infection.