Tuesday, April 7, 2009

What are the odds?

Take a full bag of Scrabble tiles and draw seven. There's a 1 in 1,736,031 chance that you'll be able to play BICYCLE.

There's a 1 in 281,496 chance that you'll be able to play VEHICLE.

And a 1 in 138,064 chance for COLLIDE.

Some days you get all three.

My no-crash streak ended early this morning at a whopping two days. Though I wasn't thinking of this fact as I was flipped onto the hood of a truck -- or was it an SUV? -- that had veered onto my side of the road this morning as I was coasting down one of those mini-switchbacks on the south side of Camelback Mountain. Instead I was thinking something along the lines of whether my front wheel would be shaped like a taco after suffering a direct impact into a bumper.

Short answer: no.

Miraculously I got up without a scratch.

There's a 1 in 179,452 chance for NOTHURT.

Not so miraculously my bike was fine too.

There's a 1 in 282,883 chance for I♡STEEL, though you must have a blank for that last one.