Jack the Ripped

Last night as I was leaving my secret hideout I stopped to talk to Jack, who lives upstairs from it. He was just gliding in from a bike ride and still had his costume on. Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized he was a bicyclist.

As I was talking to him about his fantastic ride out on Germantown Road, I noticed his face was a bloody mess. I asked him, “Are you aware that your face has been ripped to shreds?”
“Oh,” he answered. “Musta been that deer.”
“Your face was ripped to shreds by a deer?”
“A deer leapt into the road in front of me, and I had to brake suddenly to avoid it, and I went flying over the top.” He further explained that since he was drinking from his water bottle at that moment, he only had one hand free to brake with – his left one, which controls the front brake. The back wheel kept on going, and the bike tried to do a somersault. “These disc brakes will stop on a dime.”

“Disc brakes? On a bike? You’re kidding!!” But it was true, and here’s a photo to prove it. Obviously I’m way behind on my bike technology. As I looked over his bike I began for the first time to seriously think about someday buying a new bike to use for road trips as an alternative to the Sherman tank I ride around town.

I warned him he might want to call 911 once he went inside and looked in the mirror.
Then he leaned over to write something on the map he was giving me and I saw that his shoulder had lost its textile membrane – i.e., giant hole scraped through shirt.

My. We’re so different as human beans, aren’t we? I will not paint the picture of the state I’d be in had I undergone such an ordeal.

The deer survived without injury.