Contact between face and road surface: the case against

It may seem a bit of a long shot, but just in case you’re considering rubbing your nose on the surface of a road, I thought it might be helpful if I shared the result of my own experience. Which convinced me that it was not to be recommended.

I was on my way to an appointment with a dentist. This was only my second appointment with my new dentist, and I have to say that I like her. She’s the first dentist I’ve come across who seems to be able to deliver treatment without a nurse to order around.

That’s quite a contrast to most dentists I’ve known. Most of them seem to regard it as a professional requirement to maintain a commanding style towards their assistants. You know, issuing brusque orders – barking them even – such as ‘suction’, or ‘torture instrument number 3’ or ‘no, I need it more painful than that’.

This new dentist does it all herself, which I found impressive. She seems capable of placing a suction tube herself and even go so far as not merely to suggest rinsing but even seeing to it herself that I have the liquid to rinse with. So I was hurrying along, intent on not being late. Hurrying along not on foot but on my bike.

Cycling, I’m told, is good for the health. 

“Yes,” a Spanish friend later told me, “but only if you stay upright on the bike.”

Things would certainly have been better had I lived up to that notion.

It’s probably less good for my health, though far better for my psychological wellbeing, that we have bikes with electric motors. Sitting at the bottom of a long, and even worse steep, hill was always enough to prevent me feeling any attraction towards cycling. But now we have little motors that can mitigate such awful climbs, I feel much more inclined to use the bike.

I was only minutes away from the dental surgery. Travelling along a street climbing towards the centre of town, but keeping up a highly respectable speed, thanks to the assistance generously offered to my legs by the makers of the bike. Then I heard an ambulance siren behind me.

I moved over to the right to ensure that the ambulance had all the space available in that narrow street, to get past me.

They say that virtue is its own reward. That means, of course, that there is no other reward for doing good. But I’d go further and say there’s often punishment for doing the right thing.

As I pulled over to the right, virtuously, I got a lot too close to the parked cars. As I said, I was batting along at a reasonable speed. Moving that quickly makes hitting a wing mirror a spectacular occurrence. As I can personally attest.

My bike decided it was time to stop and lie down. There are laws, elaborated by men of great genius like Sir Isaac Newton, that make clear what happens to the body travelling on the bike when said bike reaches an unplanned decision to stop that way. I naturally obeyed those laws. Pausing only briefly to stroke the handlebars with my ribs, to ensure that they too would carry a reminder of this important event for the next few days, I kept on travelling into dramatic (and no doubt clownish) contact with the ground where, somehow, I managed to scrape the road surface with both my chin and the bridge of my nose. That’s the bridge, not the tip. The tip avoided damage. I have no idea how that happened, and I certainly couldn’t do it again if I tried, which I suppose underlines the accidental, as opposed to deliberate, nature of the whole experience.

Noses don't do well, scraped along a road

The upshot of it all was that I turned up at the dental surgery with blood gently flowing down my nose. I have to say the people there rose admirably to the situation. Before long, I’d been cleaned up, disinfected and provided with an icepack to hold against my nose. I was so impressed that I even asked whether medical training was part of the course followed by dentists, but apparently not. They just know how to deal with minor injuries in their patients, which I find both impressive and, on this occasion, convenient.

And the dental treatment took place despite all this drama. It was just a hygiene session, so involved little complexity and no pain. And, to complete my sense of awe at the service provided, it was the dentist herself who did the work.

Overall, I’d had a most valuable experience. I’d learned still more about my self-reliant dentist. And, above all, I’d learned, as my friend later suggested, that a bike is best if you stay upright on it.

Noses aren’t really built to do well scraped along a road surface.