An Interesting Experience

I was riding home on my sports bike sometime in 2018, late at night.

The ride was smooth despite the crazy driving in Nigeria that had me downshifting and doing my best to keep away from the sudden swerves and knee-jerk actions of the typical Lagos driver.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I got inside my estate, and was thinking of the pleasures awaiting my arrival at home. I made a last minute decision to take a slightly longer route, so as to enjoy the journey a little longer.

A lot of people were on their way home and this particularly slow Camry was meandering all over the road, causing a bit of a queue of vehicles behind it. Just ahead, I could see the roundabout that would sling me along a long stretch of road where I could open up the throttle and have a last bit of fun before I got home.

I pulled in the clutch, downshifted and accelerated past the Camry, swerving to its left and towards the roundabout. There were a lot of vehicles speeding round it at that time, but then, a small gap presented itself between all the vehicles and I entered, relying on my speed to keep me upright.

Just as I banked left entering the roundabout, a big vehicle appeared as if from nowhere. One minute I was sitting on my bike, the next I was on the ground sliding after it, with the screech of brakes, blaring horns and alarmed voices filling the air.

Just before I started sliding, however, for the briefest yet longest split-second in existence, I was aware of being in two places at the same time. My centre of consciousness was still upright, in the position I would have been in if all had gone well. At the same time, my body was on the ground, and I could feel the leather on my jacket doing its work. I just took a mental note of this weird experience, not knowing it was going to send me down a rabbit hole of inner awareness exploration. In essence, I still had a mental image of myself being upright, even though my body was already sliding after the bike. For the first time in my life, I was aware that I was not my body. Nothing broke physically, but at that moment, my construct of the world did.

Time slowed down. I heard the scraping sound my bike was making and I was saying in my head, “I hope the damage is not too bad.” I did a quick body scan and thanked my stars that I was always so meticulous about dressing properly, with full gear, every time. I felt like I was in a cocoon. Then I realised I was sliding feet first, and had the smart idea that I could use my feet to slow the slide, and that’s when physics took over. Putting down my feet flipped me over and I started rolling over and over on the ground. It was really embarrassing for me. As I flipped, I noticed an estate security guard standing frozen, looking, strangely enough, not at my rolling self, but at where the impact with the car would have been. I have never gotten that image out of my mind. It didn’t make sense. I have a wild theory about that.

“I nearly ran over you!” I heard a woman’s voice scream out from an SUV, but I was just thinking to myself, “This is quite embarrassing,” as I picked myself up. She manoeuvred towards me and asked anxiously, “Are you OK? I’m a doctor.”

“Thank you, I’m fine,” I said, thinking in my head, “What a fine woman, wish we had met under different circumstances.” Then I turned and walked towards my bike. A peg was bent, with ugly scrapes along one side, but the bike started up on the first try.

I rode home, relieved that the foreboding I had had for a few days before that incident, about crashing, had discharged itself in such a pretty harmless way.