Thrilling Bike Adventures

So there's this BBC series called Sherlock, predictably based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories (and this will all be relevant in a minute, I promise), but set in modern times. (It's very good.) In one episode, the title character and his friend John Watson break into a top secret sort of complex of government labs. I suppose they don't actually break in so much as sneak in, because Sherlock pretends to be his brother Mycroft, a very high-ranking government official, who--

Anyway, that doesn't matter. But Baskerville, as it's called, is home to some sketchy genetic experiments and the like. It's surrounded by barbed wire and minefields, and generally has a "stay away" sort of creepy aura, with lots of eerie local lore.

A few days ago I went for a bike ride. I wanted to explore, so I biked down this not steep but nevertheless large hill, which had houses and trees on one side of the road and on the other, this big span of fenced field with a couple buildings and PWD signs all over it saying "NO TRESPASSING: PROPERTY OF THE PHILADELPHIA WATER DEPARTMENT." And this was all very intriguing. I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going. I was thinking that I could just turn around and I'd be facing towards home, and then I'd just ride home. I was also thinking that when I got home I was probably going to work on the triplets in that Vivaldi concerto, and the second movement, and the Mozart for All-City and districts, and also my D-flat major scale. I know, thrilling thought process.

Then I heard this kind of KA-CHUNK, KA-CHUNK noise. Rudimentary visual inspection revealed a stick caught in my bike chain. So I had the brilliant thought that "maybe if I just keep going, it'll fall out." 

Yeah, and maybe I'll turn into a unicorn.

Eventually it did fall out, dislodging the chain from the gear on the way. Now, stuck at the bottom of a large hill, I could not pedal forward because the chain was stuck somewhere, and I had another brilliant idea - maybe I can pull it out and stick it back on the gear! As it turns out, no, I couldn't, and now my hands were completely covered with grease. 

So I had sort of coasted to a stop in this fairly-well-kept residential street, and there were a bunch of shiny white PWD vans, and all of the people in them were kind of giving me these scowly looks as if they were top secret government scientists and I was an either a spy or a harmless kid on a bike, and they couldn't decide which. It was very much like the scientists acted at Baskerville, in that Sherlock episode (see, there was a reason). They looked at me like What are you doing here, kid, don't ya know nobody ever comes around here? Mind your own business. It ain't safe and I looked at them like Did you not just see me sabotaged by a stick--no, an entire tree limb? Got a wrench or something? and they stared back at me like Go on home before it's too late. 

Also I was sort of lost by now. Upper Roxborough is very labyrinthine. I knew which direction home was, but I didn't know how to get there. 

So these glarey guys in white PWD vans looked at me like I'd better get back on my bike.

And I did. 

And then I was like, oh wait, I can't move forward. But I had a third brilliant idea - I couldn't actually pedal, but I could still roll. I just wanted to get away from the secret agents in the PWD vans. (Ah, the pains of having an overactive imagination.) So I got on my bike, and rolled down a convenient hill that happened to be to the right. 

I was thinking - brilliant idea #4 - that if I could find another hill that pointed homeward, I wouldn't have to walk my bike. Obviously it never occurred to me a) that I was in denial of the laws of physics--I couldn't go down a huge hill, then go back the way I came by going only downhill, or b) to call my mom and ask her to come get me. At this point I was on my bike, my feet on the pedals but not actually doing anything, going down a twisty sort of hill, and I'd completely lost my sense of direction. It was more or less flat now, so once I'd lost momentum I sort of pushed myself along with my toes like I was on a wheely office chair. I felt that to get off my bike and walk it would be to admit denial. Unfortunately, the pedals kept hitting me on the fleshy back of the calf, which is now bruised and scraped because some bike designer in Scandinavia decided to form the pedals to look like rectangular metal sea stars.

Long story short (okay, shorter) I finally found my way back to the hush-hush PWD hill, and walked my bike about a mile and a half home, sweaty, smeared with bike grease, and lightly sunburnt. The secret agents seemed to have decided that I was harmless and were content to watch me drag my bike uphill while they ate Tastykakes and leaned against their vans. Ugh.