Did I ever tell you about that time in London?

I was sitting in the Comfort Diner on W. 23rd Street tonight, having dinner with Meg and Erika. We were talking about navigating cities and Meg was recounting how lost she felt in London when this hilariously embarrassing memory popped into my head. Did I ever tell anyone about the time I jumped from the back door of a moving double decker bus in London? Probably not...in recounting the story tonight I was both crying with mirth and cringing with the sheer humiliation of the whole event.

It was my third visit to London, this time with my friend Janel. We were staying with her friend (and now my friend) Leah, who lived near the Angel tube stop in north-central London at the time. I was returning to her apartment after a day in the city by myself, and I was on one of those classic London red double decker buses with the open back door. I was riding in the front of the bus on the top floor and knew that my stop was coming soon, but wasn't exactly sure where it was until we were about to leave it. The bus was packed and I had a hard time making it to the stairs and then down them. By the time I got to the back of the bus, the driver had already pulled out of the stop and was picking up speed on his way to the next destination. In a moment of absolute brilliance, I decided to just jump off the bus. I'd seen it done in movies of course, and as Erika reminded me tonight, everything you see in the movies is completely possible in real life. Ha!

So picture it...the bus is moving forward and I jump straight out at a right angle to the bus. In hindsight it would have been better to jump out facing forward so I could have kept moving forward when I hit the ground, as momentum was moving me in that direction. Hindsight is always 20/20 as the saying goes. I jumped out facing the sidewalk though, and that was a colossal mistake. I landed awkwardly on my feet and then completely lost my balance thanks to the forward momentum and sort of skidded and rolled into the gutter. My shoe flew off and landed on the opposite sidewalk of this narrow little one-way street. I didn't know what hit me really, and suddenly there were several nice British people helping me up off the street and bringing me my shoe. I felt life THE biggest dork that ever walked the planet, and moved as quickly as I could to get away from the scene and the people who had witnessed this act of stupidity. When I got back to Leah's I told her and Janel the ridiculous story and they both laughed at me. Luckily the only injury I sustained was a big fat ego bruise.

Just writing this makes me giggle and turn red! Ha! Now that I've written this down for posterity's sake this memory can be suppressed again along with all my other humiliating moments.