Vreselijk ongeluk

Evenwichtigheid dragen we hoog in het vaandel. Na het Fietsmanifest van enkele dagen terug, vandaag toch ook een kritische noot. Ook fietsen is niet zonder risico's. In september 1895 vond een vreselijk ongeluk plaats: George Herbert Shaw en Bertrand Russell knalden met de fiets tegen elkaar. Het scheelde ontzaglijk weinig of de westerse cultuurgeschiedenis had er helemaal anders uitgezien. Maar goed, geen gespeculeer. De feiten en niets dan de feiten:

"The two spindly intellectuals set off on their bicycles through the rolling hills of Monmouthshire. Before long, Bertrand Russell, slightly out in front, stops his bike in the middle of the road in order to read a direction sign and work out which way they should head. Shaw whizzes towards him, fails to keep his eyes on the road, and crashes right into the stationary Russell.
Shaw is hurled through the air and lands flat on his back “twenty feet from the place of the collision,” in Russell’s empirical estimation. Following his normal practice, Shaw picks himself up, behaves as though nothing is wrong, and gets back on his bicycle, which is, like him, miraculously undamaged.
But for Russell, it is a different story. “Russell, fortunately, was not even scratched,” Shaw tells a friend, adding mischievously, “But his knickerbockers were demolished.” Russell’s bicycle is also in a frightful state, and is no longer fit to ride. Russell says of his assailant: “He got up completely unhurt and continued his ride. Whereas my bicycle was smashed, and I had to return by train”, (meer hier).

Fietsen is, we herhalen het, ook niet zonder risico's.

(Het verhaal van het ei zo na gruwelijke en wereldgeschiedenis bepalende fietsongeluk komt uit Craig Brown, Hello Goodbye. A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings. Een veelbelovend boek.)