Today, I rode my bike to work.

It was 5.6 miles, on Dekalb Industrial, which is as miserable a road for bike riding as it sounds. Google Maps for bikes will actually take you a full mile out of the way to avoid this treacherous stretch of one-lane speedways and puny sidewalks where broken shards of glass and spiteful tree roots come together to dance and laugh at the pain of a 22-year-old cycling neophyte in a Spongebob Squarepants helmet that she may or may not have purchased in the preschool section of Target because it came with a matching bell.

Now, this is not the first time that biking has punished me. Let’s take a little trip back to 1997, when I was in third grade and all pumped up to ride my purple Huffy big-girl bike all the way from my house to my best friend Lauren’s house (about 3 blocks away) by myself for the very first time.

I set out on this journey, much as I did this morning, with a great deal of enthusiasm and pride, grossly unsuspecting of the tragedy that would soon befall me.

So, I was biking along, feeling like a pro, when all of a sudden—boom! Obstacle. In the 1997 edition of this story, that obstacle happened to be a very small leaf pile. Well, more like a handful of leaves artfully/viciously arranged upon the sidewalk. They looked slippery, so I swerved to avoid them. And promptly flew off the curb and into the street, landing in a way that somehow ended with me underneath my bike (oh how the tables have turned) with a fractured wrist and a bruised ego.

I remember sitting there in the middle of the street, thinking well, I have two options. I can haul my broken body out of this street and make my way over to somewhere that can mend me, or I can sit here and wait. I chose to sit there and wait. But no one came, so I had to go with Plan B.

I’ve encountered quite a few situations like this over the course of my life—situations in which I fall down, wait for someone to come help me up, wait a little longer, feel pathetic, then finally get up, dust myself off, and find a way to move on by myself. I am, after all, very clumsy, but I am also very resourceful. The two tend to go hand in hand.

So I guess this is kind of like one of those “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade stories.” But it’s a little different than that. Sometimes you start out with lemonade and then all of a sudden you crash. And sometimes you start out with lemonade and then slowly but surely things start to get rough until you realize you are now 15 minutes late for work and still trapped on the wrong side of a stream of traffic that no number of crosswalk button pressings or traffic light mind-control attempts or pathetic looking facial arrangements will halt.

The other day I was working with a hugely successful multi-unit Wireless Zone franchisee from Michigan named Dave. Dave and his brother Greg have literally been servicing cell phones since cell phones arrived on the scene in 1983. They caught the wave early and managed to ride it out for the better part of the 80s and 90s with an independently owned one-stop-shop for all things wireless that began to spread across the country. Then, in the early 2000s, Verizon stepped on the scene and began restructuring it, realigning markets and creating new programs and new ways of doing things. For awhile, Dave and Greg lost their footing and business slowed. They probably felt like someone trapped on the wrong side of the street in a stupid Spongebob helmet as traffic whooshed by in front of them. This went on for a few years. But they stayed with it. You can’t just leave your bike on the side of the road. You love your bike. It can take you places. You have to stay with it.

Then one day Dave and Greg discovered Wireless Zone, the wireless retail franchise that is now the largest in the country. They were amazed to find a brand almost completely parallel to theirs—from the philosophies to the services to the entrepreneurial journey. It wasn’t long before they took on the Wireless Zone name and merged their company—a great company, with plenty of knowledge and talent and repute—with the Wireless Zone structure. This was two years ago. Now Greg and Dave have just opened their 7th Wireless Zone in the region and are about to open their 8th. Each of their new locations has been10-30% larger than they’d originally planned, and they’re currently remodeling one of their first stores to be double its original size in order to meet their customers’ needs. Business is booming, despite the rocky economy.

I want to throw a statement out there right now, in order to remove any doubt: I did, in fact, ride my bicycle from my house to my office. 5.6 miles. I made it.

And now, at the end of the day, I am preparing to load my bike into my dear officemate Jordy’s car and gratefully accept the help she has to offer without shame. But I’m still going to wear my Spongebob helmet, all the way home.

A Blog Post By: Hilary Cadigan (@idacyral)
Hilary is a member of the Public Relations team for No Limit. She graduated from Emory University and is a contributing writer for Lumino Magazine.