Distressed

I had another scooter accident: that pushes my running total of scooter incidents up to five now. It's okay, it was just an itty bitty one, really.

This time, it was just with myself.

I was on my way to work, annoyed at this rider who kept coming up on my right, so my attention was on him from the corner of my eye. When I turned my attention back to the front, the originally smooth-going traffic had stopped.

I emergency braked, and my front (disc) brake locked, and the scooter veered, leaned, and slid. Me too. Picked myself up, dusted off as cars detoured around me, and pulled over to the side for a breather as people waiting for the bus peered on half-interested.

All body parts still accounted for, I resumed my commute, punched in at the office, and went to a local drugstore for medical supplies. Back at the office, I emptied my little shopping bag onto my desk -- iodine, antibiotics, cotton swabs, bandages, and tape -- and proceeded to nurse my new wounds in my cubicle. I kind of felt like Mark Wahlberg in Shooter (after he was framed and had to make that getaway), except that his was scripted and all fake: this was the real deal, baby.

Anyway, the wounded include:

- me, in the way of a scraped left forearm and scuffed left knee and a rather bruised ego
- my puffy jacket, which is now losing feathers even faster through the gaping 1-inch hole (yeah, a whole patch of shell missing, not just a slit)
- my new Adidas shoes, where the left toe cap is scraped up
- parts of the left side of my scooter (which now match the right)

What's more, now my new jeans are scraped and torn at the knee as well! Thank goodness for the distressed look, so in a way, the scooter fall actually made my clothing more fashionable.