Not all that bicycles do is good April 28, 2009

Every week, 1 million animals lives are lost in the US due to roadkill. (unchecked source but who cares, this is Jashbeiner)

This has always been my  one of my biggest dislikes of all the dislikable things cars do.

I have always thought bikes were mans most perfect invention, that they had no faults, well I was wrong.

I have freaked the bajeesus out of many animals while on my bike, which never amounted to more than some frantic dashing or flapping out of my path.

One time a squirrel leaped in front of my wheel and began a mad dash directly in front of my bike barely dodging serious harm. The whole episode lasted maybe a second but I remember it as if it happened in slow motion. I remember clearly the sound of its scraping claws grasping frantically along the cement path. I stared into the little critters fear filled eyes for what seemed like ages just before it made a its heroic Indiana Jones dive out of the way barely escaping death.

Today the squirrel (I am assuming it is the same one) was not so lucky, this time I was going just a little too fast, and it jumped into my path much too late.

It was like any normal ride home, when all of the sudden i see movement from the right, then underneath me, whoosh, squish, sickening bone crunch….

Before either me or the squirrel knew what was happening, I had snapped its spinal cord in two under my front wheel, followed by my back wheel.

I looked back, and saw that the squirrel remained where I had hit it. I rode back hoping what had happened had not just happened.

It happened.

Jashbeiner has learned a valuable lesson today, a bike is a weapon…

a weapon that Jashbeiner unwillingly wielded today and Jashbeiner took a life.

I have to live, knowing i did this, for the rest of my life and I will never be able to look at my bike the same.

I am going to post these signs along the river paths in honor of nuts and to save others like him.

The “Pathkill” didn’t look too bad, it had some blood coming out of its nose, but its body was completely intact. Fluid had amassed on the underside of its eyeball in what looked to be tears of sorrow from recently dying.  It was completely lifeless.

I used some sticks to carry it to the river side…. where I slowly lowered it into the water. I said some Jewish because it was all i could think to say. I apologized for killing it . I decided to give it a name out of respect, I named it nuts or in Hebrew, Egozeem. It was nuts for jumping out in front of me like that plus sometimes i yell “nuts!” when i am disappointed, and boy was I disappointed.

in fact, I felt terrible.

Later that night at work, my Saudi Arabian coworker Mashel, had some very wise and helpful words from his country. He said “It was an animal and i see you are very sad, but at least you are not like those people who kill human beings and are like SWEEET!”

suspicious words from a towel head… I was relieved when he left the building.

however he was right, there was nothing SWEEET about killing nuts.

April 28th, 2009

This will go down as the day Jashbeiner learned his bike was a dangerous weapon.

The day nuts died.

RIP nuts

your death was not in vain.

There will be a memorial service in my room tonight starting at 12:32am.