It should come as no surprise to precisely nobody that I’m a big, dumb klutz whose unintentionally idiotic maneuvers occasionally land her in the soup.
Oh, boy, today I surpassed myself. It’s possible that many months of not breakin’ shit had left me in some sort of karmic hole. I hope I’m not due for a whole bunch of backlogged fiascoes.
Anyway, today, due to poaching a shortcut and not paying very good attention to my surroundings, I crashed through a banner at a street-fair. Yep. Did I ever feel like an asshole.
This shortcut I took was through a nearly-complete construction site. I knew nobody would be working today, so I dodged around the barricades on one end of the site, rode through, dodged through the barricades on the other end, rode on a ways and came to yet another set of barricades that I didn’t remember ever having seen before.
“Must be a new equipment staging area,” I thought as I dodged around this last set of barricades and began to pick up speed again. It was such a lovely afternoon all sunny with light breezes. The street I was riding on was shaded by tall trees on either side, and I was feeling like there was no more perfect place to be nor day to be there than right there, today.
I was kind of daydreaming a bit and WOAH all of the sudden I am looking at a string of banners hung across the roadway. I clamped down on my brakes, but realized I wasn’t going to stop in time. I ducked to avoid clotheslining myself, but hit a lower line with my tire. I was dragged to a stop, and heard a terrible ripping sound. The line that held the banners was tangled around my crank arms and the end of one of the banners was pulled most of the way off.
At it turns out, there was a small street fair in the process of setting up. At that point there weren’t many people there, but I was able to track down one of the organizers. She was furious that I had dodged through the barricade (it wasn’t part of the construction, I learned, it was part of the fair) and even madder that she was down a banner for the fair.
I did what I could do: apologised sincerely and profusely, gave her my contact info, and assured her that I was more than willing to replace the banner I’d so stupidly ruined. Now that I think about it, though, I think I can repair it, so I am going to give her a call on Monday and offer to fix it. The part that tore was separate from the banner fabric itself–a sort of adhesive, folded band that could and probably should be stitched to the banner fabric instead of just glued.
One way or another I am eager to repair or replace their banner, and hope I can redeem my barricade-dodging assholery. Michelle NFTW.
Being furious sounds like a bit of an over-reaction on that woman’s part; hell, you could have just ridden away, and she never would have known what happened! It was an honest mistake, and you did the right thing– she should be thanking her lucky stars that, if damage had to occur, the party involved is such a decent person bent on doing the right thing.