Why Do Guys Do Stupid Stuff?

I was having a conversation recently with Emily's Uncle Dave about how guys are always doing stupid stuff just to see how manly they are. Like carrying too many or too heavy things at once just to see how much I can do. Trying to fix things at heights that could lead to paralysis while on the top rung of a ladder. Or fixing important parts of appliances with duct tape, because it works and it's cheap. I have always done things like that and most of the time it's not in competition with anyone else, just myself competing with myself saying, "I bet I could do that faster." I don't know exactly why we do things like that...but we do, and like Uncle Dave said, "Mike, you will always do stupid stuff."

He's right. Like this past weekend. I needed to buy another bike for our friends who came to town. As I'm walking back the new bike in one hand and my own bike in another from the 6 football field sized supermarket by our house, I thought myself, "This is way too slow...I bet I could ride my bike while holding on to the new bike...yeah, that's a good idea."

Now, I always get stared at when I'm on my bike. It is understandable. For one I'm white, two I'm 6'2", and three my bike is probably a good 6 inches taller than anyone else's. Staring might be the wrong word...feels a little more like getting checked out. Often when I stop I look around to see who is doing it just because I can never get over how obviously they do it. They start by looking at my face, then slowly move their eyes downward, fixating on my bike (I think) and then back up to my face...the whole time I'm still looking at them thinking, "My face is up here buddy." And as if I didn't get stared at enough, what I'm about to do made me totally deserve it.

I proceded to hop on my bike grabbing my handle bar with my right hand and the other bike's handle bars with my left. I slowly made my way through the first intersection (which is like the size of an American city block). Feeling pretty confident and allowing my man-ness to come out I decided I could go a little faster. As I was almost home I had to make a slight turn to the left to avoid the three wheeled flaming potato cart. This would have been fine had the handle bars not been touching each other. As I turned left, the new bike turned right and cut out my tires from underneath me. I was going slow enough that I put my foot down, only to have the gears on the new bike scrape down my leg in a perfectly spaced curvey path.

That will be an amazing scar.

As the scarring takes place I go flying over my bike with my left foot still on ground and plenty of time to think about how stupid I look and how I better jump up quickly after I hit the ground so I can save what little pride I have left and not get run over by the 20 mopeds tailing me. Of which I manage to do (except for maybe saving the pride). In this process I also broke the brake on the brand new bike and bent the handle bars. Thankfully labor in China is cheap and I got both fixed for about $5.

Lesson learned? Probably not. Good story? Most definitely! Awesome scar? Time will tell.