OK, by this morning everyone i know had sent an email advising me that the new owner of the Segway company had ridden his Segway off a thirty foot cliff into a shallow river, a fall which neither survived.
I just want to assure everyone, including the woman who cautioned me from the sidewalk as i rode to an appointment with my retinologist this morning, that a couple of years ago in a fall incurred when i ran off a six-inch curb, i smashed my hand so badly that it cannot be completely repaired. Consequently, you can imagine how cautious i now am regarding cliffs of any height.
And that said, folks, I’m seventy. Do i really want to die slowly, gaga and incontinent in a nursing home? I thought about this on the way to my appointment this morning. In the first place, the day was entirely too gorgeous to wear my helmet. And then, as i cut across on Webster and was approaching Geary Boulevard, the light went red, so i twirled up the pedestrian overpass.
See, if i go full tilt on the overpass, i get a twelve-second head start on the cars waiting waiting at the light and can sometimes beat them to Post Street before the light turns there. Today, as i was crossing at top speed, it struck me that if i lost control, i might be just high enough that i’d tumble over the guardrail down thirty feet onto Geary, where if the fall itself didn’t kill me, the job would be taken care of by the seven cars, two SUVs and a Muni bus that ran over me at 45 MPH.
Who wouldn’t choose that over a long, drooling death?
Then again, who’s thinking about tomorrow?