Barefoot skiing... on the road

I had a bit of fun recently on my bicycle.

I turned onto the main road which leads to our house and it just so happened that a taxi was going by at a slowish speed. I decided to catch up to it so I could draft off of it and get a free ride home. However my bicycle only has one gear, so in order to accelerate quickly enough to catch a taxi I have to stand up and push really hard on the pedals. I did this and sped up very quickly. I was almost caught up to the taxi when all of the sudden the chain jumped off of the back sprocket, causing the pedals to spin freely for half a second.

Because I was standing up when the chain jumped and pushing down hard, I was utterly unprepared for the pedals to freespin like that. And because I was going almost 30 mph when it happened, the results were rather exciting.

My left foot was pushing hard with my toe pointed at the tar, and when the chain jumped my foot slipped off the pedal and landed big-toe-first on road that was flying by at 30 mph. If I had been wearing steal-toed shoes I would have hardly noticed. Unfortunately I was wearing flip flops. My toes folded under my foot and my large toenail took a good bit of my weight. The rest of my weight was carried by my large toe, especially the bony part of it in the middle, and my second toe.

Some percentage of my weight was also held by the handlebars, which I wrestled to control as I skied down the road. That's what it felt like-- like I was skiing down the road. After the initial landing I managed to shift some of my weight onto my right foot, which still had the flip flop underneath it, then hop back to my left foot (now with flip-flop more or less underneath) before the left flip-flop could break from the exertion. It takes a long time to describe all of that but it happened so quickly that I didn't have time to think- I just reacted. I was straddling my bike and hanging on for dear life as I slid and skidded down the road. I was moving to fast to run, even if I hadn't had one leg on each side of a wobbling bicycle, so I just did my best to stay on my feet as the flip flops grated on the tar. My main thought was that I didn't want the bike to fall over. The way I was half on and half off it, that would cause a whole lot of bumps and road burn.

After rolling and sliding a good 20 or 30 yards I finally slowed down enough to trot and then hobble. I pulled off the road and stood, shakey-kneed, on the shoulder. I looked down at my feet, fully expecting to see the bones on my left foot. To my amazement there was only one major gouge on my big toe and a somewhat smaller one on my little toe. I wasn't sure how deep the wounds were because they were pooling with blood. So I hopped back on my bike and cycled home as quickly as I could to get myself cleaned up.

When I got there I found that my wounds were really very minimal. I lost some skin but not nearly as much as I would have expected. I lost a layer or two off of my toenail but that doesn't matter any. Clearly God was looking out for me. I'm really not sure how I managed to stay on my feet and stay above the bike (or rather, keep the bike under me) even though I wasn't on the seat and as far as I know I never landed on the center bar-- I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if I had!

I took a picture of my wound a couple of days after the incident but I'll spare you. If you really want to see it, leave a comment :-)

Now it's been a few weeks and my toes are healed up pretty well. As long as I don't bump my foot into a chair or something it feels pretty good. And I'm still biking all over the place, though a bit more carefully!