Oh Those Pesky Promptings.

This is the SPD pedal on my mountain bike. It is a cheap model I bought several years ago and I have never liked them very much. I have always found them a little difficult to get into and a couple of weeks ago my shoe lace got caught in one of the hooks and it almost caused me to fall.

I looked at some new pedals and almost bought some Crank Bros pedals which don't have any sharp hooks or edges to catch things on. I thought I should buy some of these but for some reason I didn't act  on it. Too bad I didn't. I wish I had.

Had I placed this pedal on my bike then, today would have been a much better day for me. I went back out to the north shore trail today.  This trail has been killing me lately. Two weeks ago I took two falls and got beat up pretty bad. I had to big scrapes on my right arm and left leg, and a huge bruise on my left hip.I thought I might have broken a bone in my hand so I went to urgent care to have it Xrayed. It wasn't broken. I decided I just needed to ride slower and more within my ability. I don't think my balance is as good as it used to be. So today I was riding slower and trying to be more careful. All was going well until I got to a particularly steep and rocky incline. I have walked up this hill before but today I decided to try to ride it. I lost my momentum half way up and fell over backwards. I must have caught my pedal on my right calf right below the knee as I went over. It tore some pretty deep gashes. I had to ride a couple of miles back to the car and by the time I got there the gashes had turned into one nasty looking open wound. I drove directly to the urgent care clinic. When the doctor finally got around to working on me it took about an hour to put in all the sutures. The skin was torn away exposing the muscle underneath about two inches long and an inch and a quarter wide.

The little piece of skin hanging down could not be saved. As I was driving to the urgent care I was thinking maybe I'll sell both of my bikes and buy a  trike.