If You Fall Off Your Bicycle

A friend once asked me, "why do so many embarrassing things happen to you?!" I was surprised by the question, sure I had been telling her a funny anecdote about something that had happened to me at a local store a few minutes before, but I hadn't thought my story was embarrassing. And I suppose that is the difference--what she found embarrassing I just found hilarious--in retrospect anyway! Sure at the moment I had blushed, but afterward it just seemed like a absurd story to share. In the spirit of funny stories, let me tell you: I fell off my bicycle while taking these pictures. I'm not sure "fell off" is the right terminology--more like, I fell over and my bicycle fell on top of me. No serious injury to person or bike to report. But let me tell you it is a harder thing than it looks to cycle as slowly as possible across grass towards your camera and tripod, trying to get to the sweet spot of where you set your focus but moving as slow as possible so there's no movement blur. Thankfully there were no witnesses to the indignant fall and I somehow managed to press my remote off on the way down so there aren't even photographs of the failure. I think my fall must have been as slow as my attempted cycling--Thomas once compared watching me fall out of a tree to a slow-motion sloth crawl. I think it would have been a pretty embarrassing scene if there were witnesses, but I'd still probably be telling the story here, because at the end of the day being able to laugh at yourself mitigates any potential humiliation! Just one of the perils of attempting to take your own pictures and not being able to move or re-adjust the focus of your camera while attempting a moving shot. But you know what they say, "if you fall off your bicycle--be sure to share it with the Internet!" I think I'll stick to the stationary bike shots from now on when I'm attempting self-portraits. I did ride my bicycle home afterwards with no mishaps--I can ride a bicycle when I'm not trying to photograph the act.