so close

I've had an almost perfect morning.

Sunny bike ride to the shala along quiet roads where I enjoyed the bright, new green of the trees and thought about how nice it would be if every trip into the city at home were this civilized. Long, slow, lazy yoga with only a bit of pain as opposed to the non-stop agonizing pain that has typified my practice these last few weeks. Without work to rush off to afterwards, I was able to sit and meditate for 20 minutes after my practice while the others slowly finished off theirs. Coffee in the sun while I caught up with the world online and thought about which route I wanted to take home - the scenic one or the quick one.

I was starving so the quick route won and off I went. Riding a bike is still a novelty, doing so in a city that doesn't hate bikers is even more of a novelty and to be able to jet about on my bike on a day as gorgeous as today? Well, if I were in a movie, there would have a 'Paris in the Spring' type soundtrack accompanying my ride and a voice over narrating my happy thoughts "tra la la, here I am riding my bike home on this gorgeous sunny day, how very European of me, tra la la". Until I fell.

A full-on, sprawled on the road fall after my tire got caught in a streetcar track (same exact place as yesterday as matter of fact, but I didn't fall then). I haven't actually seen a local doing that yet so I think my cover is blown. As is my pride. I escaped without a scratch, which is good, but I broke Julia, which is bad. I'm pretty sure it's a fixable break but it's still a break and Julia is still my new novelty friend that I've only had for two days so I'm feeling a bit useless and sad. I'm not sure what the movie soundrack for my afternoon would sound like but I'm damn sure there aren't any "tra la la's" in my voice overs. So sad, this North American. I need to get my tra la la back.