30 Life Lessons - The Culvert and the Bike
- Douglas McCall
- Oct 9, 2024
- 4 min read
I don't know what year specifically, but I am pretty confident it was my junior year in high school, so somewhere around 1991 or 1992. I was head over heels for my high school sweetheart, who would later break my heart, paving the way for the girl I would eventually marry, who has been the joy of my life for 25 years now.
Anyway, it was 1991 and summertime. School was out, and I had a lot of free time, but I lacked transportation. My mother worked full-time, so I was home. Society was pre-Uber, but that did not matter cause it also didn't have any money for a ride-share or a cab. As I said, I was head over heels for this girl and wanted to see her, but I had no way to get from my house to hers. She lived a little over five miles away.
Sure, I could walk to her house. I walked the mile to school all the time and often walked three miles to my best friend's house. Unfortunately, it would take nearly two hours at my pace, and by the time I arrived, I would have to start walking back. However, I had one more resource: my 10-speed bicycle!
Only one obstacle was in my way. Well, it was two obstacles. There were two huge hills on the route. The first, by the brewery in our town, had a 1-mile incline to the crest. After gliding down the back of that hill, I was immediately presented with the second hill, which was just as tall but a much shorter lead-in (functionally a lot steeper) but a much longer glide after the fact. I had made it up the first hill reasonably well, and glide down was a welcome break. After making it up the second hill rather unceremoniously, I began the downhill glide of the second hill and figured I had conquered the most significant challenges. Oh, how wrong I was.
Between miles 3 and 4, the road veers to the left and to an intersection, where you turn right and make the 1-mile flat ride to her house. However, another road split off at the veer, and the stop light was skipped so the road could intersect much sooner. The challenge is that they never connected this shortcut to the main road, and there was a 500-foot patch of grass that you had to get off-rad to get back to the cutoff. Thanks to hard pedaling and a long downhill run, I was coming down the hill and probably traveling around 20mph.
In a split second, I made a rash decision only a teen in love could make. Skip the turn, off-road the short distance, and shave one minute off my long trek. I had places to be! Three hundred feet before the patch of grass, I pedaled like there was no tomorrow, and I braced for the grass patch. "No problem," I thought, "I got this." I got about halfway through the grass patch and saw it, but with no time to react, a culvert opened!
What happened next was a blur. If cell phone cameras were a thing, I am sure it would have been worthy of a fantastic social media post. My front wheel hit the culvert opening, and the bike's forward momentum halted. Mine did not. I flew over the handlebars and off the front of my bike. I landed some 30 feet away, just inches from the edge of the pavement (which was only slightly better than actually crashing down on the pavement).
Once I figured out what happened, I limped back to the bike. The front post had bent, the wheel had a culvert-shaped dent, and the tire had popped. The bike was unrideable. I was four miles from home and one mile from her house. We were pre-cell phones; there was no pay phone in sight and I was far too nervous a teen to go to someone's house to ask to use the phone. So I walked or instead limped, the one mile, dragging the broken bike, which no longer moved like a regular bike, to her house. Eventually, I reached my destination, and her mother patched me up and, after a while, gave me my mangled bike and wounded pride home to face my mother, whom I had not told about my plan to ride five miles.
I learned several lessons that day, none of which would resonate until many years later. However, these two stand out now as I reflect back on that day.
Lesson 1 – Just because there is a shortcut doesn't mean you should take it. The one minute I thought I was saving ended up costing me nearly an hour, my bike, and I risked far more physical injury than I received. Sometimes, the longer path is the better path. Not that we shouldn't take risks, but they should be informed. I didn't know what lay on that grassy path, which was my downfall. Make sure you know the perils of the route you are taking.
Lesson 2 – I can muster strength and resilience when adequately motivated. Nothing was deterring me from reaching my goal of spending time with my girlfriend. I overcame the physical challenge of riding all the hills, the distance of a five-mile trek I had never done, and the 1-mile walk after the accident. There were many moments along the way I could have thrown in the towel, but I didn't because I was motivated toward the goal. If I could harness that strength, I could again at any other time in my life if adequately motivated.
What are the moments in your life when you displayed resilience and grit? What are your "bike" stories that can help you navigate challenging times? We all have them if we take the time to recall and retell them.
Be well!
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