Man vs. Mailbox

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and I wanted to start back up with a short story that took place a few weeks ago when I was riding by bike around the neighborhood.

Last year I bought a new road bike and was diligently riding it all season.  This year is a slightly different story.  I haven’t had a lot of free time to ride, but one beautiful afternoon when returning home from church I saw my lonely bicycle in the garage yearning to hit the pavement again.

I decided it was about time to take it out for at least a quick ride around the block.  I was in my normal church attire: a button down shirt, jeans and casual shoes.  Being too lazy to go and change I decided to just take it out the way I was.  I started getting hot and sweaty almost immediately, and half a minute into the ride I realized my tires weren’t pumped up.  I decided I should turn back and at least pump the tires up before continuing if not give up all together.

I pulled into a cul-de-sac and as I was making a U-turn I was worried that my tires would loose traction and I would slide out and fall.  I’ve never fallen on my road bike, and I had planned to keep it that way.  I ended up taking the turn extremely wide and my wheels were mere inches from the Belgian block curb.  I momentarily looked up and a few feet in front of me was a mailbox that was mounted to be overhanging the road and directly in my path.  Being too late to avoid the mailbox, I just braced for impact and rode straight through it.  After the collision, the mailbox went flying through the air and landed on the owner’s lawn.  Fortunately, I wasn’t injured (apart from my dignity) and miraculously I didn’t fall either. 

I quickly stopped and looked back to see the mailbox lying on its side several feet from the lone post which previously held it.  There I was standing by the side of the road in my now sweaty church clothes next a mailbox I just pulverized while riding my bike.  My first thought was, “should I run?”  But me being such a law-abiding citizen, I decided to ring the doorbell of the owners and confess my fault.  No one was home and I decided to leave and come back later.  That’s as I passed by the lone post I noticed that it was constructed like Lincoln logs where the pieces of wood fit into each other.  More importantly, the two pieces hadn’t been nailed together.  I quickly grabbed the mailbox and successfully put the pieces back together and fully restored the mailbox.  Crisis averted.  I then rode home with a semi-clear conscious.

I realized that if the mailbox has properly been nailed together, I would have most likely have been clothes-lined on impact rather than just riding straight through it.  I consider myself lucky to have walked away in a victory after the match between “man vs. mailbox”.