Desultor

Biking in to work today. Breakfast sandwich in my jacket pocket, coffee in my right hand. Nonchalant, self-satisfied.

I’m on the sidewalk. The paper-wrapped sandwich falls out of my pocket onto the ground; I squeeze the left-hand brake. This bike, still pretty new to me, has good brakes, and shocks in front.

The action of the brake slows down the bicycle, and compresses the shocks several inches, dropping the front of the bike. I am still riding high, and haven’t slowed down nearly as much as the bike has. I do what any object which knows its Newton would do, and pitch headlong over the front of the bike. My knees catch the handlebars as I’m going over. This starts me rotating so as to increase the speed with which my head is approaching the sidewalk. The bike, which knows its Newton too, picks up an opposite and equal rotational momentum. This lifts its back end in the beginning of a glorious arc which will allow the entire bike to land upside down on top of me when I hit the pavement.

In the end, I’m very little hurt. A bit rough on the palms, and a slightly sore neck (and some new little cracks in the front of my helmet). And, most marvelously of all, I didn’t even spill my coffee!

I don’t usually do silverware in the bottom part, but hey!

Note the dishes. I would gladly suppress the evidence provided by them of my lack of diligence in photographing the fruits of my labor, were my shame and displeasure in these shortcomings not dwarfed by my admiration of this pretty cat, and my desire that others see her.

The full dish-load is, alas, undocumented, its memory eroded to flinders by the sandy wind of time. We can speculate that there were probably more plates on the top left, and could reasonably guess at pint-type glasses at the bottom left.

But these can only be guesses. There might well have been cutting boards on the top left! Cookie sheets! Perhaps rather than planar objects, the space was filled in devil-may-care manner with a popcorn bowl and something to nest it on? We will never know.

I think this must be every plate. It’s a pretty cool idea to put the mixing bowl down below — I gotta remember that one. If I’d really had balls I’d've snuck a couple little things under it — given the crazy plate situation, there must still have been plenty more dishes to do when I finished this load!

Plates to the right of the bowls?! It sounds crazy, but that little trick was what enabled me to maintain stability with a world-record load of silverware!