My First Bicycle - Part Two

Like I said last Monday, I was an immediate expert bicyclist. 
In this picture you can see the Beehive up the hill behind our jeep, The Yellow Dragon. Left to right, Erva, Me, Dad, Nana (Dad's Mom) and Mom. 

From where we parked the jeep, the driveway was pretty steep and rutted as you can sort of see in this picture. The building to the right was a workshop. (It would be to the left in the above picture.) Dad had his ham radio station there and his tools and it's where we kept our bikes. It's also where I "went to school" because Mom was home schooling me at the time.














About a week or so after I learned to ride I coasted down off that gravelly driveway, and merged onto a flat stretch of dirt road that merged onto a paved road.

I was going too fast. There was a lip where the pavement met the dirt road. I was afraid if I hit that lip too fast I'd loose control of the bike. I slammed on the handle-bar brakes, not realizing what would happen.

Bike came to a sudden stop, Bish went flying. I hit the ground so hard the wind got knocked out of me. When I could finally breathe I started screaming...and Mom didn't call me "one of God's screechers" for nothing. Somehow, from all the way up at the house, she heard me and came running.

I'd landed on my hands and knees. My palms were scraped and my right knee was a mess. It was gouged and full of dirt and tiny bits of rock. Mom took one look at it and realized her ministrations might not be enough.  She loaded me in the jeep and we went to tell Dad we were going to the clinic in Cruz Bay and have Dr. Peterson take a looked at it. It might need stitches at the worst. But it definitely needed a professional cleaning.

I, of course was sobbing from pain, from fear, from surprise at how easily I could be thrown from the bike. Plus I was upset that I was going to have a scar on my knee.

And Dad says, "Don't worry, you can wear stockings when you grow up and it won't show."

Already a tomboy, the idea of wearing stockings meant that I couldn't run around barefooted. Wearing stockings was, to me, a kind of punishment for being a girl. I wailed even louder, "But I don't want to wear stockings!"

Oh...I laugh now, but it wasn't funny then! As it turned out, I didn't need stitches, just some good irrigating, stinging Mercurochrome and a bandage.  However, it did leave a scar I still have, though it's faded. And as for stockings, I never have worn them except for very special occasions.


How about you, any bicycle scars? Are you a stockings or barefoot kind of person person?