Bike biffing in Marseille, France

Well I wasn’t going to post today as it was fairly uneventful. Slept in and biked down to Prado beach to spend our last day. Clearly I cant be trusted in the Mediterranean sun or I just dont know how to apply sunscreen cause I ended up a lobster all said and done after 3 hours on the beach. Pretty sneaky Mr. sun they have here as it didn’t even feel all that hot with that delicious ocean breeze cooling you off. Rookie mistake right? We finally found a really simple route to get down to the ocean as the last couple of days have been hectic with tons of up hills, no bike lanes, biking with busy traffic or having to stay on a packed sidewalk and weave in and out of pedestrians, and oh man do they love that! Well the way we took had a few spots that were a tad tricky. You either stay with traffic in these small single lanes with meridians on either side and try to keep up with traffic or you can ride right in the middle down the electric trams path. Not many go by so we chose that route when it arose. Well were on this one part in particular and you have to cut across the tram tracks pretty quickly and at a 90 degree angle as these tracks are the perfect size for bike tires. Every time we were on those spots I would think to myself “oh man, it would suck to get a tire stuck in that.” Well didn’t my dream come true…Mark in front of me pedaling away as me and my short legs struggle to keep up with him. The tracks started weaving and quite a bit and I try my hardest to cut across all of the intersecting tracks and put my tire directly into it. I realize this and for whatever reason, instead of just stopping I try to turn my wheel to get out of it. Brilliant move Einstein. Oh and those short legs I mentioned earlier? Ya, I cant even put my feet down on the ground when I’m sitting on the bike so combine all those together and you get a recipe for a pavement face plant! And didn’t this happen to be one of the busiest roads too, of course! I jar my wheels and it shoots me off the left side of my bike and I skid across the pavement on my left thigh landing hard. Before I know what’s happened I see Mark throw his bike down and come running back towards me (gosh he’s a good man, a golden man if you will) but before he can get to me I am surrounded by 4-5 locals that have rushed over to my aide, sympathetically (I’m assuming) speaking french to me. I figured they’re either — a) calling me an idiot tourist and asking why I was riding in the tram path or b) asking if I’m okay. Either way I was thankful for the help up. Mark gets to me “Omg are you okay? Are you hurt?” “Yes Im fine, just some scrapes, its more so my ego that’s been bruised so lets please get the hell out of here, quickly.” And so we did. I think the fact that i dont understand anything anyone is saying helped a lot with the embarrassment for sure. I really did get off pretty lucky. Most roads here are insanely bumpy and not very smooth at all. If I was going to crash I couldn’t have picked a better spot. Any other road would have chewed my leg up pretty good. I bet I looked super majestic though flying through the air in my romper.

Well that’s my day summed up — pretty sweet last day in Marseille. Gotta go out with a bang right?? Tomorrow we begin our long trek from here to Warrington, UK.

 

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