Today I woke to the rain of blood...

I've been mostly away from internet while on the road, so this one is dated July 19th....

Instead of writing about the Mt. Holly Grand Prix with a side note about my accidents, I will tell you about my accidents with a side note about the race.

So it all started yesterday morning, I figured I'd just take the train/subway into work and then just ride back from work and tack on some leg openers to get ready for the race the next day. Taking the train still means riding 25 blocks through downtown Philly to the PATCO station. (I have no idea what PATCO stands for.) I was about 3 blocks from the station and I started up from a stop light. While standing up getting the bike up to speed and turning I skipped the chain. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but on this occasion I happened to be wearing flip-flops with no soles on them. (I ripped the rubberized soles off of them about a year ago because they were starting to come unglued, and I left them where I was sitting at Moe's as a kind of unusual footprint.) So back in my story, my left flip flop slid off of my pedal and straight into the spinning bladed spokes of my front wheel. Luckily the corner of my toenail stopped the spoke from cutting all the way through the tip of my big toe as my leg recoiled from the wheel. I gritted my teeth and grunted and swore a couple of times as I continued my attempt to not miss the train again. The stinging sensation kept getting worse as my flip-flop collected a pool of blood and I tried not to look at it. Once on the train, the bleeding continued as my flip-flop overflowed and left another kind of ffotprint on the train. When I got to work, I dumped Hydrogen Peroxide on it and it fizzed....a lot.
The next day I did the Mt. Holly Grand Prix in the 2/3 field. I felt really strong. Tried to bring the 3 man break back with 3 to go. We ended up catching them at the line, but they still got the top 3 spots. (The race was actually 7 min shorter than it was supposed to be.) I finished 12th (2 spots out of the money). I would have been happy had the course not been built for me.
The real story begins after the race. I was riding back to my car and was making the turn into the parking lot at about 12-15 mph, when I just slid out. An easy turn after a tough race with a bunch of super fast corners. I had no idea what happened. It seemed to happen in slow motion and i just kinda fell over. Weird. But I busted and bruised my hip and rashed up my arm. (which I will find out tomorrow is intensly reactive to sunlight. I jumped up completely and totally embarassed hoping that not many people saw it. Luckily only 2 or 3 people witnessed the disaster. I think I'll stay off the bike tomorrow.