Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for September 25, 2021

A better option than going face first into a brick wall.

Time to get out the iodine for Calvin’s scrapes.

Hey, it worked.

Shrubs. Always aim for the shrubs. The ones without thorns, I mean.

When he learns to ride a bike, Hobbes will give the same advice.

That’ll teach you to listen to a stuffed toy tiger.

My mother, for reasons I will NEVER understand, let all 5 of us kids ride our bikes downhill from Cloudcroft NM to the level part near Alamogordo. She then drove behind us pulling the trailer to load the bikes into to get them back up the mountain. She clocked me at 55 mph, and my brother at 60, as I recall it. I do know that when I decided to pull onto the (gravel) shoulder while slowing, intending to stop for a rest break, I wore a lot of rubber off my shoes keeping the bike right side up — and succeeded. Wouldn’t have worked worth damn all on skates.

Time for mom to bring out the Mercurochrome. That’ll teach him!

Calvin looks like steering into a nuclear war head.

Yeowch! Gravel rash!

I wrecked my bike in a gravel intersection when I was a kid and embedded a piece of gravel in my knee….Extremely Painful it was !

Grass would have been a lot better bet.

And he thinks the bike is out to get him!?

That’s how I stopped on my very first bicycle ride. :P

Oopsie!

Gravel and gravity – not a good combination, folks!

“That only was a suggestion.”

Do a quick 180 and then you’ll be going uphill. That’ll slow you right down.

“Don’t rollerskate near hills!”

and in Quebec the legal drinking age, speed limits and stop (Arrêt) signs are just a suggestion.

Gravel? Really, Hobbes?

Had this one saved for years, one of my favourites along with the fly swatter and the light bulb from Garfield..

I love the flying gravel in the third panel.

Well, it works for 18 wheelers but their a lot less fleshy and bloody.

Friction can be your friend, depending upon where you apply it.

It’s a technique.

HUH, Seemed like the thing to do at the time!

GRAB A POLE,, GRAB A POLE,, too late.

Belly laugh today!

Sometimes, every option you have stinks, and you have to look for the option that stinks the least.

Is that a bit of remorse on Hobbes’ face?

I carry around a couple of pieces of gravel under my skin, some 30 years before they disintegrated.

Puddy tat fowgot to pack a pawatoot again.

One time I was bicycling down a hill just as it started raining, and I had wet brakes and couldn’t stop. At one point the road turned left and there was a gravel uphill driveway in front of me, so I took that. Learning nothing, I continued back down the hill only slightly more in control.

Things didn’t get better when I got a car. One time I was driving at a fast clip in the snow when I approached an intersection. Unlike the road, the approach to the intersection was compacted into ice. I couldn’t stop and there were cars waiting at the intersection. Thinking quick, I deliberately skidded into the curb. It worked, but it knocked my steering out of alignment until I got it fixed several years later.

Learning can be painful

How ironic! They just showed the reason for run-a-way ramps on Quora. Nice going Calvin. You were lucky an 18 wheeler was already in the one you used.

After not having skated in decades, I rented some nice skates on Venice Beach and skated uphill, all the way to Lincoln Blvd. Downhill was another story. After watching me stop by running into telephone poles, a pedestrian called me over and spent five minutes showing me how to make the drag-skate stop, until he was sure I could do it consistently. He said he was late for work but would never have forgiven himself, if he had read about my being injured in an accident after he had just walked on by.

Heroes are everywhere.

My father told of his terrible skating accident. He went downhill, faster and faster with a concrete wall on one side and no way to stop. Like Calvin, he finally crashed and had pretty bad injuries though no broken bones. He remembered the Good Old Days as not so good for him.

LOVE the “SKRUNCH!!”

Steer onto a LAWN and fall down.

‘Bactine’ alert! I did the same taking a diver off a bike when I was 9 or so. Brought home some River Edge, New Jersey real estate in my knees from someone’s driveway.

Geez, that’s gotta hurt! The more sensible place to fall would’ve been on the grass!

He’s flying by lawns. Grass is a better and less painful crash site.

My absolute favorite Calvin & Hobbes comic

some suggestions are better than others

Funny. That technique works fine for semis.

Brings back childhood memories of doing something really stupid that caused a lot of pain

Hobbes is just brimming with good advice.

Steer onto the GRASS

Back in the day, while driving on Route #80 West I saw signs for RUNAWAY TRUCK and an off ramp. What a name for a town? No, it was for trucks whose brakes had failed.

It works for truckers

Cripes that had to hurt!

Maybe you just don’t stop. Keep going, weaving around the cars, until you bleed off your momentum. Or get into the street and try to slow down by making S-turns.