Well team, it finally happened. After countless rides, jumped curbs, and brushes with oncoming traffic, my favorite method of Detroit transportation betrayed me. Last week on a beautiful Friday night at around 9pm, I completely wiped out on a Bird™️ at a crowded intersection (Woodward & Grand River) going what felt like 100 miles per hour. Check the tape.

Fuck me right? Hurt like a mother fucker. Still hurts like a mother fucker. In addition to brushing my teeth and putting on deodorant, you can add wrap my forearm and hip in bandages to my morning routine.

So lotta questions I’m assuming. Let’s just get this over with. This occurred last Friday, September 20th around 9pm. There was a happy hour after work and I had a few cocktails. A tale as old as time. But when the crew decided to continue the night further, I decided to make what I thought was the responsible decision, and head home. So being in Corktown, with my car Downtown, I took the most reliable method of transportation in the city- I hopped on a Bird™️. The result?

That’s what I get for wearing my dainty pink short sleeve button down in such a gritty city. But let’s take a look at how this happened.

I was whippin’. Zoomin’. Buzzin’. Cookin’. Whatever you wanna call it, I was going fast. No joke, right before I fell, I remember thinking “Man I’m zippin’ right now.”

So this frame right here is just before the fall, I am obviously in the red circle. This is about the moment I was thinking I was hot shit for scootin’ so quick on this Bird™️. Now sure, it’s easy to point at the clown who was a couple of drinks deep wearing a pink shirt in the heart of traffic and call him an uncoordinated piece of shit, but wait a second, who wrinkled the carpet on the road?

I mean, look at those fucking things. They are the size of speed bumps. What are they? Death traps. They are fucking death traps. So watch closely now, I hit the first one, it shakes me, I hit the second one and it slightly throws off my direction…but if you look carefully, it’s not the bump that throws me.

It’s the fucking sunken sewer cap. I actually keep my balance through the wrinkled carpet of death but the second wrinkle throws off my direction and leads me to juuuuussssttttt barely clip the sewer cap.

Let’s zoom it in if we can here team.

Now the fun begins. The fall. My left forearm took the absolute brunt of the fall, followed by my left hip, then after that it was the palms of both my hands (but really not as bad as you would think) and my right knee. So how did we get here? How did I not absolutely shatter my chin/forehead on the downtown Detroit pavement? Answer: I got my foot down, QUICK.

This is the beginning of the end. And it’s actually what saved my face from reconstructive surgery. The foot going down gave me just enough push to get enough air under myself to keep my head up, and get my forearm down. And boy did I get that forearm down.

This is a beauty of a screenshot, because this is clearly the exact second where the Bird™️ breaks. The handle bars went completely sideways. From here we enter into “The Scorpion”, it’s where my legs reach a flexibility and height they have never experienced and my arm goes straight into the ground, mimicking the stance of a scorpion.

Notice where the fall started and where it finishes.

Start:

Finish:

My arm dragged along the pavement for a good yard of that. Here is the whole thing for you again:

The recovery. I get up pretty quick. 1. Because I’m embarrassed as all fuck and 2. because I was worried about getting run over. After realizing traffic sees me and they aren’t going to run over their wounded Bird™️ warrior, I first check to make sure my legs work.

Legs work. Check. Now as you may have noticed throughout this whole thing, there were cars behind me who witnessed this entire collapse, and while they probably ERUPTED with laughter when they saw some skinny white boy in tiki hut day club douche shirt hit the fuckin deck in the heart of traffic, two of these cars actually asked if I was okay and even offered me a ride while testing out my legs. This is me telling them “I’m good.”

Then I pick up my sunglasses. Because of course I have my shades on me at 9pm at night on the eve of fall. Fall, get it? whatever. shut up.

It’s at this moment I go into a complete “fuck this” mode, and it looks like I am going to bail on the entire scene and just pretend none of this ever happened. It’s already in my past as far as I’m concerned.

Look at me stomp away like the idiot I am, leaving that mangled Bird™️ in the middle of Grand River. But then comes the moment of reflection.

I stood here for a few seconds, forearm and palms dripping with blood, reflecting on the person I am and the decisions that lead me to this point in life. I think about where I want to take my life from here and if I’m really living up to my potential, or if I really am just nothing more than some ass-hat in a pink shirt and sunglasses who fell off of a Bird™️ in the middle of traffic because he was too full of himself going 21 MPH to realize there were a couple of bumps in the road ahead.

But in life there are ups and downs. There are bumps in the road, wrinkles in the pavement, and sunken sewer caps in the street. And sometimes, there are all three right next to each other and the combination of them all knocks you flat on your ass. Or in my case, forearm.

But that’s not a reason to quit, (jesus look how broken that fucking thing is), you gotta get back up. You always gotta get back up.

And you gotta get back on that horse (Bird™️ in this case) and get to your destination.

And even if your horse is damaged, (you can see in this picture how broken the Bird™️ is because the tire is facing forward and light is shining down at a complete right angle), you gotta just find away to make it where you want to go in life.

Even if you realize the horse (or Bird™️) you’re on is fucked beyond recognition (note the light again) and you gotta get off of it and walk (which I did) you can’t let the bumps, falls and bruises in this crazy world stop you from getting where you want to go.

And that’s all I got. Oh and if you have never seen the clip of me blowing out my knee on a set of stairs here’s some bonus footage.

 

– Frank