15 min of infamy

[beachmike1]

It was nit fame except to a small circle of coworkers. About 17 or so years ago a buddy of mine lived off 15 th and orange in Huntington Beach. I lived off Florida and Garfield. At the time the area was in a pretty bad way economically. Housing was in the hole, unemployment hig etc. well the new developments down town were vying with each other pretty strong for money. Well what wer two divorced middle aged guys to do. Bob was about 46 and I was about 37, one place had chicken dinner for like 5 bucks. But while we were both pretty broke tough we were gainfully employed as engineers. So being cheap we took advantage of the rotating discounts of Huntington Beach. The Big brew pub had a two pictures for one special I think on Thursdays. Since we' were in aerospace and had to keep our records clean we did not take advantage of that as the DUI would get us fired. So me fine summer evening after a few hours of surfing...on empty stomach we ( me? ) came up with the smart idea of riding our bikes to down town. The idea being ...no car no DUI! .........you can probably see where this is going. Bob had a classic KHS road bike I had a Ross mountain bike I had since I was 20. Wel first we had the usual Pale ale a pitcher, shared than we had a red ale. Again shared. And to keep the nutrition ip we had salads. ( basically we were field on alcohol and in fermented carbohydrates, and some crunchy water. So we went home.....on pch...on the bike path by the beach. When your true Y decided to not wait for traffic and road very fast across the street and used a drive entrance to get some air under the wheels to have a bit of fun. The weekend before it cleaned the steering thread bearings..and as led the front end of the bike and set the bars higher past the scribe line in the steerer quill. I was experimenting with handlebar height and would get the right type of steerer after eo determined the height. Wel one is advised not to pull the steerer higher than that line because the grip strength of the steerer may be compromised. Okay with that. I got a good 18 inches of air, it would have been more but as I pulled up n the bars to get this tank of a bike airborne....you can now guess what happened..the steerer came out of the fork. So here I was doing 16 mph and say two feet in the air with the handle bars in my hand and no way to control my fall. All I cold think was..." This is gonna hurt". I landed, the fortnight wheel came down fine , I rotated forward with nothing to stop means fell. I was ass over elbows. Bob gathered me up and we walked me and the bike to his place we dumped the damaged bike and me in his jeep and he drove me home. I got home and took off my white shorts......there was a perfectly round grease stop right at the base of my zipper....so it cold have been much much worse. Of course the next day I got ribbed pretty badly for this. But being the boss the ribbing was good natured and short lived. Bob and I still talk about it...or rather he still talks about it to everyone he knows ...and reminds them when I get introduced. Not 15 min of fame..but funny.