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Not sure. I have some running to do. I'm leaning toward ramen, but I have half a pizza that I can eat on too.

Branch

Thank you! I was doing polling for a while there and another story always seemed to be chosen instead. I've stopped polling now, and I have a priority for two other stories next... but the third part should be out at some point in the first half of next year. 

I regret to report that the Oznl bicycle has recently made a series of assassination attempts upon its lord and master. The first effort was a very Cleopatra-like death-by-venom after it made me run over a large snake. The snake was as surprised as I was however the snake had better countermeasures.  It happened on a concrete bike/pedestrian path that ran through light forest behind a local beach.  I was looking ahead for traffic whereupon I can only assume the snake came out of the undergrowth that lines the path and attempted to cross the road quite close to my front wheel: where I was NOT looking.  Maybe it was following a chicken.  By the time we saw each other my bike went “thud thud” over it. It was a large (maybe 1.5 meter) glossy black snake.  Snakes in Australia are generally best left alone but glossy back ones are especially best left alone.  Venn diagrams between “glossy black”, “snake” and “harmless” in Australia have zero overlap. I was fortunate not to have been bitten.  Snakes generally don’t like being run over and tend to strike out at whatever is running them over with blinding speed.  Mindful of my certification-expired-but-still-medically-valid first-aider training I stopped to inspect for puncture marks on my bare leg calves anyway.  Sometimes adrenalin will prevent you from feeling the bite but you’ll inevitably feel the neurotoxin.  Fortunately I could find no evidence of envenomation and so resumed my ride. The following week I was approaching the same area of path whereupon the bike decided that the snake incident having failed, to throw me off it at velocity.  It happened in a manner most succinctly articulated by Ernest Hemmingway in “The Sun Also Rises”: gradually, and then suddenly. I was merging back onto a concrete bike path at a shallow angle from a dirt track I was on.  Mindful of the previous snake incident, I was studying the path ahead.  Bikes tend to go where you look and the path ahead wasn’t quite in the same direction as the path I was riding on.  The bike drifted off the edge of that path back into the adjacent dirt.  No problem.  It’s a mountain bike.  Dirt doesn’t bother it.  Realising my error I gently steered back towards the path again at a shallow angle.  I was cruising at about 20 kph / 15 mph (I have a speedo on my bike).  I’m actually experienced on two wheels (years of motorbike riding) and I know it’s best not to correct quickly.   My front wheel gently re-mounted the path without incident but by the time my back wheel got close enough to join it, the level of dirt had dropped considerably below the concrete.  Instead of re-mounting the path, the rear rim scraped along the edge causing the back wheel to stay where it was on the dirt side.  The trouble here is that the front wheel was now taking a completely different trajectory to the back wheel despite being joined to it by a bicycle. The resolution for this dichotomy is for the bike to fall over and so it started to do just that. Realising what was happening I thought I would just step off it and save the day. In the heat of the moment I’d forgotten about the implications of my left leg de-accelerating to a dead stop on the ground whilst my right leg and the rest of me continued at 10 - 15mph attached to a falling bicycle. After a very brief flight I slid along the concrete path for what seemed like a remarkably long distance. Once stopped, I lay prostate on the path experimentally wiggling fingers and toes: nothing seemed to be broken at least and I considered it likely that I could stand up. My phone and sunglasses had flown out of my pocket and off my face (respectively) and were a meter or two away in front of me (both remarkably survived).  My shirt was torn at my shoulder where it had slid along the pavement.  My shorts had been pulled down slightly on the same where they’d caught on the pavement I was sliding across exposing a generous swathe of nappy (Active Air: slightly wet).  You could see the top tapes on my left side.  My left hand was bleeding.  My left knee was bleeding a lot.  The bike appeared to be fine, having a brief siesta in a patch of ferns, its front wheel still spinning gently. Fortunately the path was deserted.  For some reason I perceived the biggest risk to be that of bystanders attempting to rescue an injured (and at this point, obviously nappy-clad) old guy.  I felt no pain but I could taste the metal flavour of adrenalin in my mouth as I got up and hauled my shorts back up over my nappy.  Clearly they’d caught on some piece of terrain and gotten tugged down from the rest of me that was sliding along still.  I’ve ditched wearing plastic pants over a disposable whilst riding.  This was for the best as they would have been doubtless destroyed by gravel rash. Having confirmed that the bike was undamaged (all the damage was to me) I got back on it and proceeded to gently ride the 10km / 6 miles or so back home.  As the adrenalin wore off the pain started.  I suspect that there was a swathe of nappy on display still as my traumatised clothing didn’t seem that interested in staying where I put it anymore but I just wanted to get home. My left knee hurt a LOT.  There was blood running down it.  It’s probably a good thing that Australia has lost the battle against consumer marketing and now observes Halloween.  I looked like a zombie but zombies are about this time of year. The knee hurt a LOT more when I got home and pointed a shower nozzle at it to get the gravel out.  It hurt even more again when I hit it with disinfectant but I was aware that the infection risk was high if I didn’t clean the wound carefully. I’d lost a lot of skin on it: probably 2” x 2” but I suppose all weight loss is good weight loss even if it’s only 10 grams.  Whilst I dodged the infection it’s taking quite a while to dry up and heal.  The arm and shoulder injuries proved trivial.  The shirt is a goner but my shorts were scarred-but-ok and the Active Air nappy held together quite well all things considering.  Apart from a scrape on the rear rim the bike itself also seems quite unaffected but any knee-flexing (such as pedalling) would simply open up the debrided bit of my knee so I spent the rest of the week off the road. I’m still amazed that given my age and mass that I got away with it so lightly.  It occurred to me that this is as close as I’ve gotten to a nappy-clad moment in the ER.  When I first came to a stop I automatically assumed that I’d sustained an ambulance-worthy injury.  It was that violent.  At the very minimum I should have been “rescued” by bystanders who would have seen my nappy.  It was curious that this section of beach path was deserted at the time.  I realise that it’s almost inevitable that at some point I’m going to find myself unexpectedly in a hospital in a wet nappy but not this week it seems. And as a kind of bonus, I *did* take the bike out again and promptly got a puncture triggering an 8km walk in a wet nappy pushing a disabled bicycle.  I’d expected chafing would be the primary injury but no, it seems that walking whilst pushing a bike means walking with a twisted posture.  The last 2km walk was brutal. Ibuprofen is wonderful.  Exercise is bad for you.

I always enjoyed stories of college aged boys that wet the bed. This one is a lot more original than most, where it's a landlady that is forcing them to wear diapers.  I'm already looking forward to the next part(s).