Tour de Brooklyn, Tour de France.

On Friday afternoon, after a day spent pecking at my keyboard in a lethargic, pajama-clad funk, I finally mustered the energy to pull on a skirt and ride my bike to the grocery store in order to get dinner ingredients. The store was blessedly cool, I was supremely hungry, and before long I'd loaded up an awful lot of stuff: pound of crabmeat, various vegetables, several pints of blackberries, a big new bottle of olive oil, and an assortment of items in cans.

In short, a bit too much stuff for a basket-less bike to accomodate. Wobbling away with the unwieldy bounty -- it weighed at least twenty pounds -- slung lumpily onto my back, I felt top-heavy and disturbingly off-balance. (I have no idea if Quasimodo ever wanted a bike during his tenure at Notre Dame -- between all the lust and death and ringing of bells, Victor Hugo never mentioned whether his misshapen protagonist had a secret, secondary yearning for a Peugeot -- but if he gave it a try and then decided against it, I think I understand why.)

And then, right when the straps of the bag were starting to bruise and the bike was wheezing along and I had decided that it might be better to just get off and walk it, my shoelace suddenly came untied, caught in the pedal, and yanked my whole center over hard to one side.

WELL.
I want you to know right now that I did not tip over.
Again, I did not. Tip. Over.

Instead, I executed the most brilliant grocery-laden cycling save in the history of Brooklyn, and possibly the world:




Needless to say, I was pretty effing pleased with myself. And even moreso when, after successfully tucking my shoelaces in without so much as hitting the brakes, I heard the sound of applause coming from the sidewalk, looked up, and discovered that a group of production guys from one of the nearby film stages had been watching the whole exercise, and were now giving me a standing ovation.

Hell yes, I thought, grinning from ear to ear. How great is that? How GREAT? Is THAT?! How often does a person manage to unsnag their shoelaces from a bicycle apparatus, while in motion, while carrying twenty-five pounds of groceries in a sack, and actually have an entire horde of dudely dudes witness the awesomeness? How! Great! Is! That!

WELL.
Understandably, I thought it was VERY GREAT INDEED.

I thought it was so great, in fact, that I made it almost all the way home before the thrill wore off enough for me to realize that the round of applause probably had very little to do with sincere appreciation for my impeccable awesomeness.

And a lot to do with the fact that, with one ankle propped up on the crossbar, there is very little question that they all had a multi-second-long, totally unobstructed, super premium view of my crotch.