personal victory in a bike helmet

So, about a year ago I went for a bike ride. I live in a house on the river. I have a fantastic view of the water and I can, whenever I choose, take the canoe we keep for some friends about 200 feet and set it down in the water. Being right next to the river means we are also right next to the bike trails. However, there is this big construction project going on between my house and all the rest of the cool biking trails. So, unless I am content with a 2 minute bike ride, I must detour around the construction. On the fateful day last spring that I went for a ride I decided to try to take a shortcut on the detour coming home which involved me going down a really steep hill (concrete hill that is) with a busy street at the bottom. I am not always the smartest sock in the drawer and I decided to try to ride down the hill. Big mistake. My bike is approximately 12 or 13 years old and the breaks, they don't work so good. So I started going faster, toward speeding traffic, down this hill and I pulled the breaks a little too hard in my nervousness and, well, that was my second mistake. I'll spare you the big fall details (because they are really only good if I can act them out) but it hurt. I think I laid on the cement for about 5 minutes before I forced myself to get up and walk my mangled bike home. Then I laid on the floor of the living room in the fetal position for a couple hours. I think I did some damage in the stomach area or something - I hurt for a couple months. But that is beside the point. The point is, everytime the opportunity arose to ride my bike for the next 5 months, I made some sort of excuse. In the end, I was just too scared to get "back on the horse". So yesterday I decided enough was enough. It was a gorgeous day and I was NOT going to miss a whole nother summer of riding my bike. So I straightened out my poor mangled bike (it doesn't work quite as good as before sadly) and forced myself to ride to my hair appointment. I'm glad I did. This time, I walked my bike down the infamous hill - I may not always make the best decisions but I do try to learn from them.

So yeah, that is my personal victory for the week.

Oh and here is my rant of the day. Printer people are dumb. They don't include the USB cables in the box anymore. So now I have to go out and buy a USB cable before I can use it. Harumpff.