My Recent Obsession (Japan)

 Anyone that follows me on Facebook knows I've been somewhat obsessed with the Asian music scene. I know that I have a fascination to learn new things but it seems that it has almost completely overtaken any of the music I listen to. I stumbled across a video of a guy that seems to have the same issue. I'm sorry that I don't have a link to it. It was interesting finding someone that could articulate what I feel. Now, there were some bands that he referenced and liked that I don't. I'm not a fan of "core" metal. I don't like throat singing. But other than that, we vibed. He brought me some insight that when it sunk in, I looked at Tracy and said, "That's it!" He said that Japanese bands were doing progressive music, something that hadn't been seen since the 70's and 80's in the West. Progressive music has a lot of time changes as well as strong shifts in melody. That is the kind of music I like, music that is hard to dance to. So that explains it.

I wanted to post somewhere my favorite songs with a little backstory. I figured this was a decent enough place. These aren't in any particular order. I have put them in a public playlist, as well as others that I'll come across later. This list will change, but probably not the blog post.

I think the first songs I came acrossed, or were recommended to me by YouTube, was IronBunny. It's some guy in cosplay along with 3 university girls doing the singing. His guitar work is amazing.

In more of a concert song, I really enjoy this song. 


This was more of a college project so the band wasn't around long. One of the women, as I found out later, joined what is now one of my favorite bands, Koiai. It was started by Li-sa-X. Li-sa-X is a child prodegy when it comes to the guitar. She was phenomanal when she was 8 and just kept going up from there. Anyway, Kotano, the woman from IronBunny, became the singer when the band consisted of her, Li-sa-X and Hazuka, a guitarist from Nemophila. This video was one of their first releases.
 
Later, they picked up Kanade, another prodigy but with the drums and the basist from East of Eden. The basist isn't official yet but she shows up in this video.

This interest led me to other more mainstream Japanese bands. The biggest of which was one that I had in my Music queue but I never really paid that much attention to it, BabyMetal. That is until I got into their concert videos. The premise of the band is Kawaii Metal, Cute Metal. These girls started in their very early teens and were now in their 20s. Their concert videos were epic. What a production. This video below is still one of my favorites.

Then I found Band-Maid. Another costumed band but my first video video highlighted the drummer, Akane. Holy cow, she could play. And the lead guitarist, Kanami, was a shredder of the first order. 

This is "From Now On". Great song.

I do have other japanese bands/songwriters that I really like. Here are some of them.

Tuki. She wrote an album of songs when she was 15. I think her singing is excelent and so far beyond what a 15 year old should be capable of. This is the video that got me hooked but her whole album is outstanding. This video stars an actor. There aren't any public pics of Tuki which is probably a good thing. She's still young.



Mone Kamishiraishi. I first saw her when she starred in a J-drama called "An Incurable Case of Love" which, to be honest, was kind of annoying, but I liked her. Like some of the stars in K-drama, I found out she was a singer with, like, 7 albums. So here is a good one. It is such a good message too, even if you can't understand the words.

And another.

 

NEK! Another group of phenomenal teenagers. I even bought one of their streaming concerts just to see how they carried the crowd.

Scandal. They have been around a long time. Great band, great songs. 

Hitsujibungaku. I think they are the Japanese Cranberries. I bought their first concert Bluray when it came out. The drummer is an on-off kind of guy and needs a bit of a break from the tour but he's okay.

Yoasobi. This will give you seizures. She does some anime songs. Well, all of them do.

ReoNa. Great song and video.



Garnidelia. This was first presented to my ears by a cosplayer dressed up like the lead of Spy X Family anime. This is better.

I Have Nothing Left

 The title doesn't tell anything about my current state. I just had a very familiar song come across my feed and it brought up a whole lot of feels. 

The song was by Evanescence and I obsessed over their first two albums. It was such a great band and Amy Lee is a fantastic singer. Their third album, self-titled, was released when I was going through an emotional tsunami. I was coming to terms with my depression on my mission. Before then, I didn't really classify it as depression. I didn't know what it was. So I was dealing with that and finally telling Tracy about it. I didn't really say anything about my mission and Tracy respected that. 

Facebook was reintroducing me to friends I never thought I would meet / talk to again. It started creating webs of connection in my mind. Things were getting sorted out but it was still difficult. It forced me to look at some thing in my life and re-evaluate. The biggest? The church. I identified by my membership and the things I lived by. Now I felt free to question it. It was a very twisted path that got me to feel free to question it and I won't go into it here. But I was going through mental exercises and reading like crazy trying to make sense out of it all. I eventually became verbal with Tracy about my struggles and conclusions. That just fired disagreements and we had started fighting about, well, everything. I'm so conflict-averse that it was taking more of a mental toll on me than I could truly handle. 

So in this year(s) of trying to figure it all out, there came this Evanescence album. And I had finally given myself permission to feel the full range of emotions again. I hadn't done that since I was a teenager. I've always known I was highly emotional but I tried to keep it under control. I don't know if served me well or not.

I don't think it was the first time I listened to the album on the ride home one day. I feel I was quite acquainted with the songs. But this day, I couldn't keep my emotions under control. I was sitting, waiting for the light at Golf and Barrington and I started to cry. Not much at first, but it eventually led to sobbing. I felt as if my world was falling apart, and this song was playing. It spoke to me so much. I eventually had to find a spot to pull over because I couldn't drive any longer. Later, I pulled myself together and drove myself home. I still listened to this album on my drive home for the rest of 2011, I think. I needed a lot of time to cry and the privacy of my car gave me the opportunity.

So I think Amy Lee wrote the song with a TV show in mind. "Being Human", I believe. Aside from maybe the first clause, I could put my own life in the lyrics. Goll, what a mess I was that year.

Cedar River Nature Trail

After more time than I care to think about, Tracy and I hit the trail again. I've wanted to hit the trail again and this was the farthest I've gone to do this. Iowa. Essentially, between Iowa City and Waterloo, Iowa.

So we travelled to a small town called Solon to start the trek. We made a quick stop to Casey's to calorie up and I noticed a huge display of Fireball whiskey. I gave Tracy the side eye. I think I knew what it was about what it was about, but it also looked like the people of Solon had a problem.

After making a quick tour of a catholic church parking lot, I finally got to the right parking lot and geared up for the short ride to Cedar Rapids. Unfortunately, that short distance, 20 miles, was also against a 10 mph headwind. I wasn't looking forward to that.

It was a nice ride. All paved path. Shortly after leaving Ely, I stopped to check the path and someone had passed by telling me that in a forested area up ahead, he had seen coyotes and to be aware of it. Tracy also called me telling me that she couldn't see my location on her phone. I restarted my app and off I was again.

In short order, I came out of the forested area without seeing any wildlife and entered the suburbs of Cedar Rapids. The path started following the river so I went past some industrial areas as well as recreational open spaces and sports fields. With a crossing of the river, I entered downtown. I was immediately met with bars and BBQ joints and the associated smells of smoked meats. I had also started following a group of bikers that had passed me earlier. I knew that I was going to be on the streets of the city and I didn't know where I was going to go. 

Cedar Rapids downtown was quite a spot. For this part of the street, cars and bikes had full use of the street. That was kind of offputting but also, there weren't any cars to speak of so I didn't sweat it too much. I had then passed an open air theater that was packed with people with some band playing. Now I had to avoid all the pedestrians. 

I dropped a bit too far behind the bikers I was following and I noticed that they took a left back toward the river, and I was sure that wasn't where I wanted to go. So, without any signs to guide me, I took a left turn and found myself in Greene Square. I discovered I had passed the trail and got back on it. Aside from some detours, I finally found myself at the motel. Tracy had booked a motel right off the trail.

It was a nice room. I put my bike off to the side of the bed and tried to relax. I normally do 20 mile rides so I'm not sure why I felt so beat. I took a shower while Tracy was off to pick up dinner from a local Indian place. Last time she was in Cedar Rapids with Madsen's robotics stuff, she ate some good Indian food and was looking forward to having some more.

Back in college, my dorm used to have a "mexican" bar and my favorite dish was some enchaladas with rice and salsa poured over the top. The rice made it for me. It was dry and loose. I loved that rice. Since then, I've fallen in love with Basmati rice. It is so good and this meal came with so much of it. I ate my fill and then some. So now Tracy and I have Cedar Rapids burned into our minds as a place with great Indian food.

In the morning I set off again. Tracy was still in the room but I didn't need her for some time. I had miles to go. And I immediately got lost, right out of the motel. I couldn't find the stupid path. I eventually backtracked a bit and saw a small sign outside of the motel parking lot pointing to where to go. So off I went. It followed the main road for a mile or so and then angled off to the north and I was on the trail proper. Nothing of note. The path looked like so many of the others, but it was paved and straight. I eventurally started following a group of bikers and I was having trouble keeping up with them. Even on an incline...oh. Stupid eBikes. That's cheating. Another two that I switched position with were some guys about my own age. One of them kept a pretty frantic pace and I wondered if he was going to have a heart-attack with all the effort he was putting into it. The dude needed to go up a gear, or maybe buy a better bike.

Tracy met me at Center Point and the eBikers stopped there too. "Pickelball and eBikers Club" and they had their own t-shirts. I rested until they all kept going and I thought that I was going to be behind them for the rest of the way. Nope. A few of the women were more interested in talking to each other and I had trouble passing them. I finally did and so now I was between the women and the men in that group. eBikes annoy me and I kept bumping up with this group enough to keep the tradition. Seriously, I don't have this problem with bikers. They are either faster or slower, not constantly bumping into me like these guys.

I went thru Urbana and lost them at a cyclist hangout there. (Yes, they exist all along the trails.) Then the next adventure began. I became an outlaw. I was confronted with a "Trail Closed" barricade. I had read up on this and was told to just go around them. So I did. There were a few others breaking the law too but this seemed to be a very quiet part of the trail, in any case. I went along several miles of repaved trail until it eventually went to a closed, unpaved path. I later found out that this was a county line and the county intended to pave the trail but wasn't past just blocking the trail. 

I met Tracy at Brandon. Somehow I missed the big tourist attraction, Iowa's largest frying pan.

Tracy and I talked a bit there, but off I was again. This time, I would be heading through a swamp for 10 miles. And I heard my first cicadas of the summer. It was loud. But that wasn't the loudest. There was an lower tone, kind of like a jet engine, beneath it all. Frogs. The frogs were so loud. Anyway, I passed the small park seen in the top picture not so long along the path. But I wasn't expecting what I encountered next. 

This is an old coal tower from the days of the coal-fired trains. That also explains the open space as this was an old rail yard. This thing was gigantic. I assume it was remote enough that storage was kept above the rails instead of the only other one I've seen where it was fed with a conveyor belt. This was something I wish I had time to investigate. Alas, I wanted to keep moving and avoid all the mosquitos that saw an opportunity for a meal. 

A little further on I found some cows relaxing in a creek. We had a short conversation. 

The bridge over the Cedar River was long and narrow but seemed a lot better constructed than others that I've taken. This was build for bikes, not a repurposed train bridge. No pics, sorry.

I stopped for lunch at La Porte City with a sandwich from the ubiquitous Casey's gas station. A small rain shower went over too. Off again. I had to stop at the next station, Gilbertville, to sort out something from work. I was getting pretty tired. Tracy called to tell me that much of the path was flooded in Waterloo so I couldn't finish were I was planning. So I told her that somewhere in the south of Town was a Kwik Trip gas station and to meet me there. And I did. 

It was a nice ride. 75 or so miles total. My phone kept going in and out of coverage so my tracking app only had 30 or so miles logged. It lost contact around Brandon. ATT coverage of that portion of the country isn't very good. We traveled home without issue and met our oldest who had a few days off and was home for the duration.

Spite

 This is a personal opinion. 

Spite of old men. I think that is what we are seeing. Well, at least the spite of one man. Russel Nelson, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

I think we first saw it when he became president, he went and made sure Pres. Hinkley's use of "Mormon" and all the money used on the "I'm a Mormon" campaign went to naught.

Now you are seeing him negate Hinkley's other innovation, small mormon temples. Now they have to be more numerous and larger than what Hinkley brought about.

 

 Spite.

Interlaken

 

This is in reference to a walking tour of Interlaken, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04sQherhM5g.

Just some background, Interlaken was my first area on my mission. I started my mission in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah in May 1986. 

I had a horrible time.

I went to Interlaken two months later having had German crammed into my skull. I arrived at Interlaken West terminal. I walked by that station every day I was there.

For the most part, I haven’t been too vocal about my time there. I was only in the country for a few months before I was sent back to the US. I hadn’t even talked about my mission much until about 10 years ago. My wife knew I did not have a good time and never pressed me about it. 

I didn’t stay in Switzerland long. I was sent back to the US for various reasons. 

So, even after all this time, I think I avoided even videos about Interlaken subconsciously. I’ve watched videos about Grindelwald which was up one of the valleys that I visited once. I don’t know why I decided to watch the video about Interlaken. I think what sucked me in was about 30s in, there was a shot of the West train station. Dang but that made the feels flow, so I decided to stick around. Bennet even sat down to watch. 

The video starts out at the main park in town, https://goo.gl/maps/6J2ywuaEMrBzoy2B7. I really didn’t remember it at the time. I know I should have. I had blocked so much of this out of my head. I hadn’t even looked at the city in google maps until I started writing this. It isn’t that I hated the place. Even now I call it the most beautiful place on the planet. I’ve always felt that way. I was honored to spend the little time I had there, but there was more than just the place. 

The video went on. I honestly did not remember the buildings that I saw at first. Only little by little did that park creep back into my memory. Yeah, I'd been there lots of times. Almost daily. And then they walked deeper into the town. That was a beautiful river but I don’t remember it at all. I was trying so hard to remember it. Tracy knows I have a bad memory anyway, mostly due to things on my mission, like the inability to remember names. I’ve taken her to other things in my mission travels that were much less impressive than my memory tells me. Anyway, the first real thing that I remembered quickly was the dam that had a covered area and the canton flag. That I remembered immediately. 

About the time I was mumbling something about now remembering crossing a bridge everyday, there were other comments. Tracy has been vocal about wanting to go there. She commented on the beauty of the place and mentioned how sad it was that I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. I responded that I really do wish I had enjoyed it. It is a remarkable place. Some resentment was building up in me about that time, and why I couldn’t have enjoyed it. 

Then there was a certain shot that looked very familiar to me. The location is here, https://goo.gl/maps/TwYWhniM872NAcuu6. In the video, it is here, https://youtu.be/04sQherhM5g?t=1810. I’m not sure what hit me. Just that side street. Then he pans and turns east. I gasped. I had so many years of repressed memories unload on me in just a few seconds.

While I was there, there was one family that helped me and was so kind, I can’t fathom it. The Schaffners were so kind to me. They fed me, and helped me with comfort and normality. And now to why this matters.

I had severe depression. It wasn’t tied to being away from home. I’d been away to school for two years before my mission. I had wanted to go on my mission. I wanted to tell people how much the church has helped me with my life. I had such good friends in my church school. I enjoyed my time in the church so much that I wanted to tell people about it. All my time there, I’d been told being a missionary, or a returned missionary, was how you be a good person. I wanted to be a good person. The person I married deserved to be married to a good person.

My last semester was difficult and made me doubt my career choice. In the MTC, I saw a side of the church that I had never seen before. I had the salvation of the world start to be put on my shoulders. I was separating myself from all that I cherished and cared about. That was the beginning. I started shedding pounds. Getting into Switzerland, I had to be an extrovert and talk to people about my personal beliefs. While I knew that going in, it hit home. I was an introvert and I had to make even more changes to my personality. To talk to people, I was told that I had to not exactly misrepresent who I was, but not be open about it. I am pretty sure we couldn’t wear our nametags unless we were in the church itself. Sometimes I felt that I was lying to everyone. It wore on my conscience.

Also, and probably most importantly, I didn't receive any money while in Interlaken. I was starving. I don’t know how much you know how little you can enjoy a place if you aren’t being fed. I was already down a lot of weight because of depression and now I didn’t eat because I couldn’t afford to. Even Sister Schaffner, when she took in my pants !Six Inches!, asked me if I had ever fit into them. We couldn’t tell church members anything but positive things, so my companion said something like it was the exercise. 

Seeing their store again made it all real. There it was. Their paper store. Above it was their home. It all came crashing at me. My companion at the time was kind of a jerk, but he did loan me some money so I could buy some macaroni once. I think his expression was, “Macaroni fools our stomachs into thinking that we ate something.” All kinds of kindness struck me then. The members tried their best to feed us. One woman came to church and gave us each 100 francs because “God told her to, that we needed it.” I was so thankful because I could finally eat more than what I snuck out of the Schaffners’ fridge or the lunches that we had with members every third day or so. 

My one trip to Grindelwald was with a family that took pity on us so that I could finally see something. I’m pretty sure my companion was telling people that we (me) simply couldn’t afford to do anything. And that also had created some resentment in me. My parents didn’t have a lot of money and they were funding me and it was the most expensive mission in the world. This was before they pooled money from all the missionaries. My parents had to pay for everything, and yet, for some reason, Zion’s Bank wasn’t getting the money to me. I hated asking my parents for anything, yet I was begging them to get me something. To be clear, it wasn't that my parents weren't putting money in my account, it was that the bank wasn't getting it to me.

But even with all these moments of goodness that had just struck me, the overwhelming feeling was how hungry I was there. I was hungry all the time. Switzerland has incredible food, and I didn’t have any of it of my own resources other than a few yogurts, which was amazing, and a loaf of bread once.

Further on, the videographer walked over a bridge, and by that time, I knew that was the bridge I thought of. Then back to the train station. One of my memories was talking to a man there, waiting to cross the road, and I reached down to pet his dog and he slapped my hand away. I know that was because I’m an overly invasive American for me to do that, but it also made me realize, at the time, that they didn’t want us there. The world doesn’t want missionaries. And that impression was driving the depression deeper. Mind you, I didn’t even know it was depression until I read the symptoms sometime in the 2010s and “Holy Crap, that was me!”

During this portion of the video, I was quiet, and my wife was worried. I had slipped into my feelings. So much had struck me. And I’m still somewhat dismissive. A few years ago I asked my ex-girlfriend what I had said about why I was sent back to the US. She said it was something about the food not agreeing with me. I honestly don’t know what my excuse was at the time, but I was taken by how I had lied to everyone on my mission, trying to put on a good face. My parents knew that I wasn’t getting money. My mission president had tested me on my language skills (no problem there, I impressed him) and also tried to see if it was homesickness. But he knew, even through his excuses that God had changed his mind about my being there, that it was money and my situation. I was starving. 

I hadn’t made it much past the train station again. I have too many feelings about it, and I can’t process it all now.

My anxiety never went away during my two years. I didn’t gain weight back until I got married, I think. After a year out, I did shift my personality because my focus was to return to school and just survive in the meantime. I wasn’t suicidal, but I did want it all to end. I was outrageously unhappy. I wasn’t made for missionary work, even if my intentions were good.

In my return to school, I paid for everything. I worked my way through the next 3 years and Tracy and I even had some savings by the time we graduated. Still, I didn't talk about my mission much until around 2010. It was a dark part of my life.

Something in the Rain

 

I haven't finished this series, but I want to comment on it while I remember it. There are a lot of issues being taken on here. The protagonist, played by Son Ye Jin, is taking on familial expectations, workplace sexual harassment, cultural norms....a whole host of things. She's no stranger to that kind of role. She also starred in "Crash Landing On You" which faced the challenges of having North Korea right there.

I can tell when a story is well written. And I do have a type. The protagonist is usually just a normal person that won't "take it" anymore. In this case, she got tired of her bosses hitting on her all the time. So she's dealing with that, and the fallout that it is creating. There's another woman in the office that is helping her and the CEO root out the people at fault. That is an interesting arc.

She's also facing the cultural issues of falling in love with a man many years younger than she is, and she's almost an "old maid" by her parents' terminology. Well, her mother is the domineering one. The Father is fairly laid back about the whole thing. The twist is that the man she's in love with used to live with them, almost an adoptive child to the family. So everyone is freaking out like she's in love with her brother or something.

The hooks for me? A strong female protagonist. Kicking butt and getting things done, and still trying to balance her life. The boyfriend is genuinely happy, almost giddy around her. He just wants to be with the woman that he's in love with.

And that brings me to another show, an anime, that I'm almost done with, "Say 'I Love You'". It's about 10 years old. Not the best artwork, but all the characters are a little flawed and they dive into the reasons. I don't know what kind of a person I'd be if I'd grown up watching this stuff instead of Bugs Bunny. I'd probably be a better person. Anyway, the story is about an unusually attractive boy falling in love with a "plain" girl, one that is antisocial at that. One of his friends touches her in a "creepy" way and as he tries to stop him from doing it, she turns, roundhouse kicks him mistaking him for the creep, and that's what it takes. He's in love. Like I said, I have a type.

I had a girlfriend in college that had strong opinions. She didn't care if I agreed or not. That stayed with me and I've wanted strong, opinionated women around me ever since. I wanted someone to call me out on any BS I might try to push. I wanted to be better and I needed that honesty to get me there. I still do.

Another, better review.

Dundee. I Really Hate Going Through Dundee

 So Tracy didn't have time for a longer ride elsewhere in the state, so I decided to go up to Crystal Lake via the Fox River Trail. I shouldn't need her to run support, it is a nice, paved path up to that point. So that's what I need to do.

I started out as I normally would I burned up the miles to Elgin without incident. I've never actually cycled through the city completely so it was somewhat new. I did lose my water-bottle on one of the sidewalk bumps, as I would do frequently on this ride. Still, no issues. The trail north of Elgin was a bit bumpy but no real issues going up until Dundee. There's a crossing on the major east-west road that makes no sense at all, and Dundee makes you cross every road. I almost crossed that road at a bad time because the lights were stopped only a few seconds in each direction and ... well, it is just a dumb setup considering how busy this trail is. I did spot a button to push when crossing but it isn't situated where us poor slobs on bikes can get to easily. At some point, I noticed that finally both directions were red and I crossed. Then just a lot more crossings. And bikers don't like stopping so often. It is hard to get going again, we have to downshift, stop, push ourselves up and then get back up to speed. Then another street. There's a reason these bypass most of the traffic. But I understand that pedestrians can like these. 
Anyway, I got my way north of there. I didn't hold back. I figured I was hitting 15mph or so, which is a lot on my bike. I kept pushing, crossing the Fox at Algonquin. It was a nice ride up the bluff. I noticed at the switchbacks that a bunch of kids were walking up the embankment with their bikes. I kept pushing forward and reached the top along with the kids. I did the hill probably 4x faster than they did. But kids. Sometimes they don't think things through.

The ride up to Crystal Lake from there seemed to be a constant upward grade. The worst hill on the entire path was about where I turned around and it was a bridge over a very busy road. Anyway, I turned around at the corner and wondered why, a few years earlier, I was struggling with the path. I mean, I was at my wits end then coming to Crystal Lake from the North. The path was kind of unreasonable but it was only 15 miles, for Pete's sake. Anyway, I've found that I my stamina is quite a bit different now.

The path back was a joy. I hit top gear, verifying that the grade was now working in my favor. I just followed my earlier path, doing a good clip. Yeah, my thighs were starting to bark at me but I was doing fine. I stopped at a park to go to the bathroom and stretch. Then I started off again. The slight rises I anticipated from my earlier traverse proved to be no issue. 

Then came Washington Street. I was so busy trying to figure out how I was going to get through this stupid town again that my mind wandered from what I was doing. I have a bad right eye at the moment and I tend to turn my head farther than normal to make sure the path is clear. So I was concentrating how to cross this busy street and make sure that, no, there really wasn't a car in either direction. I didn't pay attention to what was on the path in the opposite direction. I don't think I was going very quickly at that point. 

"Hey!"

I found I had drifted left while trying to negotiate the crossing. Opposite me was someone heading straight for me. I moved right, and he was turning that way too. Nope. I turned back to my line. And so did he.

Bang!

I ended up standing on my bike. At some point I had come to a stop. I can't recall but because my arm hurt so much later, I must have hit my brake hard. I think I pulled all the muscles in the process. The other guy was stopped, head down, draped over my bike. He struggled at something on his shorts and I realized he was hung up on my brake handle. I pulled if off. He struggled up. By now, a few drivers had stopped and got out of their car to help. I looked down and my bike tire was well and twisted. So, I would have to call up Tracy to come get me. 

He was banged up pretty bad, I don't think he was that angry. "It is what it is." and I think that on top of everything else, we were both distracted by the crossing and I think he had a good head of steam built up. Neither of us stopped before crossing, so we both screwed up. His bike was fine. He got up, called his significant other and off he went. I snapped the picture above, called Tracy to come get me and hauled my sorry butt to the parking lot acrossed the street to wait.

When I told her that I wanted to take this ride so as not disturb her day, we got a laugh out of it. On the way back home, she suggested that since we had the bike already loaded, we might as well take it to the shop. So we did. New front wheel, new shifter (as the brake lever had broken at some point) and I might as well get that bad bearing in the crankshaft fixed.

So that is what happened. I had a scrape on my hand, and I wear gloves so I think they protected me, a bunch of pulled muscles in my wrist and a phantom pain in my thigh. It hurts, but it isn't bruised.

I'm going to live with the stupidity of the whole event for now. I did learn something. I'll leave it at that.