Вот. Писалось как сочинение для универа, а потом я подумала - а чего добру пропадать? И самой, на память, так сказать)


I’ve been speculating long enough to decide what I should write in this essay. I’ve never had such a completely „unlucky“ day when everything went wrong; at least there is nothing I can remember of. I could have concocted such a day but I don’t think it is so very interesting to read something that has never happened. I mean that in this particular case I find it, say, unfair, to create such a thing. That is why I finally decided to write down a couple of occasions which happened to me not on the same day but are still connected with each other, because all of them happened on a bike.
The first two stories date from the summer 2005 which I spent in the USA. Due to the specific character of my job I had to use a bicycle every day, from morning till evening, although I have never ridden a bike before. To my own surprise, the experience came very quickly and I liked it a lot. That is why the phrase „to ride slow“ very soon disappered out of my vocabulary. Consequently, it didn’t take long for the first accident to happen.
The morning was rainy and the roads were, therefore, too slippery for a bicycle. I had to follow my manager on the way to a cafe for a breakfast before work but took a wrong road which led not straght away but down. It was to be expected that the bicycle picked up speed. I neglected to use the break to slow it down from the very beginning though. No wonder that when I needed to bring it to a halt I didn’t manage to do it. Exactly as they show it in some cartoons like Loony Tunes or Tom& Jerry, a fence became my halt with me spreadeagled on its surface in the vertical position. The funny thing is that I got bruises on my legs at least two hands wide and in the shaoe of the metal meshes of the fence.
Another incident happened in three months which was almost the end of my stay in the US. By that time I became some kind of a bike-profi – I could ride holding the bicycle hust with one hand, or even without hands at all. Considering that I carried a 7 kilo bag on my back, that was something. The story began as I was riding home along a road on its ride side. On the left side there was a black boy riding a bike as well and without hands. This story ended up as soon as the following thought came to my mind „Hey, he thinks he is so cool? I can ride so too, loser“. What I hadn’t taken into account was a stick lying ahead on my side. The bicycle jumped up in the air, made a somersault (without me though; I was flying at that moment horizontally in the direction of asphalt) and landed on my back. I won’t enumerate all the injured limb, it will be enough to mention that even from my chest there was some skin grazed.
The last story is shorter and funny. It happened that year in Cologne, in the evening, on a bike, riding fast and over a zebra crossing. As I flew up on the pavement, a woman emerged out of nowhere before me. She must have been hiding behind a lamp-post, I don’t know. To avoid collision I turned sharply left on a lawn. My bike lost balance and started falling. I managed to free myself off of it but I lost my balance too. As I was falling I saw directly on the place where my face should have landed a very neat heap of dog’s turds. This was the first time in my life when I experienced the effect of slow motion. I managed to strech out both hands at the sides of the turds and my face stopped in a couple santimeters over them. Again, like in some cheap comedy movies.