Feeling Amazingly Lucky Today!!!
Yes.
Three exclamation points worth of lucky.
Allow me to tell you a little story. I was finished up at work today just right around 5 o’clock. Which would give me just enough time to head back to the house, drop off the bike and pick up my art supplies in time to make it to figure drawing class tonight. Woohoo! thinks me. Perfect.
So I am clipping along on my way back to the house in 5 o’clock traffic and making good time. I had just made the turn from 590 onto 104 when I heard a horrible metal noise right next to me on the shoulder of the road. It was so close that I thought that I had hit something – but the bike hadn’t wobbled or moved funny. I looked to the side, didn’t see anything…. looked in the mirror and saw something black sliding down the side of the expressway. What the hell was that? I hadn’t seen anything when I went by…. Uh-oh. Looked back and sure enough my right saddle bag was no longer attached to my bike.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh No! What was in that side? My machine case with all of my current tattoo machines in it. Oh no. Oh shit. Off at the next exit – back around to the previous exit. Shit too far. Have to get back on 590 and loop back around onto 104. What has happened to my machines? Has the bag gotten hit? Did it slide the rest of the way off the road? Will I be able to find it? Is it still intact? Or are my tattoo machines, my source of livelihood scattered across the highway? Will I be able to find it? Will I be able to get off to the side of the road safely to try and pick it up? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO!!!
Back on 590 making the curve onto 104. Got into a nice gap so there is no one immediately behind me. Throw the emergency flashers on way ahead of time and start to ride the shoulder of the road so that no one will smack into me trying to pull off.
I see the bag! Slow down to make it onto the shoulder – some dude FLYING doesn’t see me pulling off. Locks up his breaks. I get the rest of the way off the road. Three cars locked up immediately behind him. No one hits anyone. I am sure they had a few choice words for me as they went by.
Shaking a bit. The tire squealing reinforces exactly how dangerous what I am doing really is. If anyone comes over even 2 or 3 feet I am dead. I manage to get the bike all the way over to the guardrail and leaned over on the stand enough that it should be okay for a minute.
I get to the bag.
A car pulls over just ahead of where I am stopped. Probably one of the people who almost got in an accident because of me. While it could be a concerned citizen, I doubt they could have stopped that quick.
The bag is in one piece (no machines scattered across the road).
The person getting out of the car is a woman.
wait. She is waving.
Holy Shit. I am standing on the side of the road holding my intact saddle bag and the person walking towards me is one of my oldest and very dearest friends in the world. Amy ?!?
No time to ask questions.
Can you bring the bag back to my house in your car?
Yes. She can. (woohoo! I was wondering how I was going to do that)
Manage to make it back into traffic and back to the house in one piece (after another near miss on 104). Amy arrives with the bag after what seems like an eternity later (while waiting in the driveway I was terrified that she had gotten hit getting back to her car or getting back into traffic).
The moment of truth arrives. Time to examine the bag.
Remarkably there is almost no damage to the outside of the bag. The metal frame held the fabric part of the bag off of the road and it appears to have slid instead of tumbled. Check the outside compartment first. The sunglasses that were on the furthest outside part of the bag in the exterior pocket are undamaged. Nothing in there is really important. Time to open the main section and retrieve the machine case.
It is intact also. Open it up and…. everything is in it’s place. The adjustment knob came off of my rotary and I am sure some or all of them are going to be out of tune from the impact – but there is no external damage.
This could have been SO much worse in so many ways! The other bag had my iPad, my camera and some very important papers in it. None of which would have survived an impact at that speed. What if the the bag had landed in the flow of traffic? What if it had gotten hit? What if I had gotten hit trying to retrieve it? What if someone else picked it up? I was able to find the bag and retrieve it without any damage (other than psychological) and what are the odds that someone I know (and love) would be on the scene before I even reached the bag?!?
Feeling so lucky that I (of course) ran out and bought some lottery tickets…. when I got to the place and asked for help (haven’t bought a lottery ticket in years) the woman behind the counter listed off the games that were available and one of them was Sweet Millions. For those of you who don’t know, I make all sorts of people watch the Sweet Millions Ad with the bunnies in it. (I’m going to try and post the link to it below if it doesn’t work…Go look it up on YouTube) When the ad was running I would stop what I was doing when I heard the music and head directly to the TV to watch the bunnies.
So now I’m going to win lots of money in the lottery : )
Well, even if I don’t win the lottery – I still feel like it was an exceptionally lucky day!!! Once again so very grateful for all of the blessings in my life!
Just TeeJay's Blog 
It wont let me play to commercial.. I know you have played it for me before but I wanted to watch it again.. and thank you again for not dying 🙂
Perhaps I cut and pasted the wrong code? It’s on YouTube if you search sweet million bunnies.
I’m pretty glad not to have died that day myself, even though I did not wind up winning the lottery that night. I guess I had used up all my luck for the day by that point!