The Age of Pain

In case you are wondering, yes I'm in considerable pain today. More than yesterday actually. Why is that? Why after one turns 30 does the body rebel against quick recoveries? I remember falling off my bike as a kid and about 10 minutes after the event I'd be fine. I flipped over my handlebars (sans helmet because we didn't worry about head injuries in the early eighties) and broke a tooth and I was fine!

Today I woke up and all ideas of biking into Colombo quickly evaporated. My right side is in considerable pain, particularly my shoulder. My knee is still oozing (yes, that is natural ooze dripping down my leg in the photo -- sorry about the quality of the photo, but maybe you don't want a good photo of this). Oddly, my left-side lower back is also aching. I must have done an interesting body turn when I went down.Of course, the bike is fine. It was the most graceless and stupid of accidents. I had just finished a turn, so I wasn't going very fast.

After I fell and I laid there for a minute looking pitiful, one kind gentleman came over and helped me up and put the bike right. There were a couple of ladies who were closer who just looked at me like I was some kind of disgusting alien. I guess at that point I was. Ripped my pants at the knee -- thank goodness I was wearing a pair that are hopelessly too large for me and thus not a huge loss. I'm thinking of making a bag out of them.