Asthenophobia

Nick had a nasty spill from his bike yesterday. Apparently, while on a blind corner turning left, he came face to face with an Arctic truck that was on the wrong side of the road. Personally I would probably have had a heart attack from pure terror and just gone under the wheels of the lorry. Splat. Matt pancake. Fortunately, Nick had the wit to get off the road. He swerved hard to the left, mounted the pavement, came off his bike, and skidded in the mud. Apparently the lorry driver didn't stop. Bastard. I've seen the gouge that Nick's bike made when he took it down and it has to be at least a foot deep in places. He was very lucky but since there were no other motorists on the scene he doesn't have any witnesses and because he didn't actually strike the other vehicle (Fates being merciful as they are!) there's no way for him to prove what happened to his insurance company. His throttle cable was pulled taught so the throttle wouldn't respond - it was stuck at about half revs until he switched the engine off.

Luckily for Nick he got away without injury and only got put back about £130 (getting his bike picked up, taxis, repairs, etc.); the dude sure is one tough cookie considering what happened. But imagine if there was a railing at the pavement edge, or if there was a pedestrian at the side of the road; it could have been a hundred times worse. I hope that lorry driver doesn't sleep for a month or three, fretting that he might have killed someone with his irresponsible actions.

Anyway... Nick bought a bunch of DVDs yesterday, one of which is 300; a film I really enjoyed at the cinema! So I watched it last night after dinner and recalled how much I liked it. And I had watched Troy the night before... we already have The Last Samurai so all we have to do now is get Gladiator, Beowulf, and Kingdom of Heaven for a truly fight-filled film collection. Oh, I also saw Beowulf and Grendel, the cover of which looks suspiciously similar to Kingdom of Heaven and wasn't as good (in my opinion) as the newer Beowulf film.

The only thing with watching these electrifying films late in the evening is that they excite you so much that you want to get up and do something. If I could watch snippets of the battle scenes from them after getting home from work then I'm sure I'd never skip jogging, crunches, or push ups.