So I knew I had to take the truck in today, and knew there was a good chance it would be there all day or overnight. So this week I bought a bike. I’d post a picture but that would involve hiking upstairs, and I’ve already dealt with enough bullshit for one day. The bike cost $260 at Costco.
Of course, with the bike has to come the inevitable accessories. First I went to OSH, but they didn’t have the exact supplies I wanted, so I went to Big 5. They didn’t have the exact supplies I wanted either, but I bought a light, pump, and patchkit since they had them. Finally I tried Longs, but it appears that they no longer stock any bike accessories. I did however get a big white plastic basket to mount onto the rack on the bike, though the hardware would have to come later. So after all this, I have yet to even get a bloody lock.
The light was a nice light, though. It had two sets of bulbs: a regular bulb, plus a pair of LEDs, so if you blow the bulb, you’ve still got LEDs that last just about forever.
That’s all in the past.
On the way upstairs, before even getting a chance to use it, I drop it, and it falls apart. But the fall didn’t kill it, it just bent some of the contacts so the LEDs didn’t work, though the regular bulb still did. I fiddle with the contacts for a bit, and lo and behold, the LEDs work again. But the contacts aren’t quite straight, so being the anal retent that I am I reach in with a pair of pliers to straighten them out. Unfortunately, the pliers turn out to be conductive, and I short something out that blows up the electronics, so now it doesn’t work at all.
This is the time that I start to say, “Why do I even bother?”
This is all in the previous week. So today, in preparation, I stop off at Home Depot to get whatever supplies I can. They don’t have bike accessories, but I get a regular cable lock (which I’ve decided I like better anyway; I was going to get the ‘horseshoe’ type), 4 metal brackets to mount the basket, and two bolts and two wingnuts to go with the brackets.
Those of you that are better at math than I know what’s coming.
I get home and discover that, oh, I need 4 bolts and nuts to mount the basket. And did I mention that I got metric nuts and bolts? That’s all I could find! None of the imperial hardware was the type I needed, or if it was I couldn’t find it. Nevertheless, I half-ass the basket in place, and head to my first doctor’s appointment of the day.
Afterwards, I go to drop off the truck. I take the bike and ride back to OSH and get some more essential supplies: Helmet, light (again), mirror, and fatass bike seat. I also get the missing hardware for the basket. And by ‘missing’, I mean I got a whole new set since, of course, OSH doesn’t have the metric parts I got before. (And I just know that if I mixed metric and imperial I’d get hopelessly confused the next time I had to take the basket off and put it back on again.)
Then I go to KFC for lunch. I popped the front wheel off the bike so I could lock it up next to the rear wheel. (I’m a bit paranoid about my brand new bike.) Afterwards I put it back together and ride to the bus stop. Then suddenly I realize that my front wheel don’t turn smoothly. At first glance it looks like the brakes are maladjusted. It’s a quick adjustment except, oh, look at that, almost all bike shit is metric (Made In Japan), and I don’t have any metric bits. So I rush back to OSH, front break disconnected (and hoping and preying that I don’t kill myself), get a set of allen wrenches, and rush back just in time to catch the bus.
When I get off at Concord BART, I spend a full hour fucking with the brakes. It seems like no adjustment I make solves the problem. Finally realization dawns on me. It’s not the brakes that are screwed up, it’s the wheel.
The lawyers broke it.
You see, there’s a little thing on bikes called “lawyer tabs”, where the wheel connects to the fork. This makes it a little harder for the wheel to come off if you don’t know how to screw it on properly. Unfortunately it also makes it a little harder for the wheel to come off if you do know how to screw it on properly. So because of all this, I had to loosen the quick-release mechanism to get the wheel out, and I (pardon the expression) screwed it up. So the wheel wasn’t centered. So once I figured this out, I had to not only re-adjust the wheel, but I had to re-re-adjust the brakes that I screwed up thinking that the brakes were screwed up.
Finally, all this shit taken care of, it’s almost time to ride down the street to my second doctor’s appointment of the day. I’ve got about 10 minutes to get there, which is plenty of time by bike, it’s an easy trip. So the obvious thing happened: I got a flat.
This is the time that I start to say, “Why do I even bother?” (With what? With Anything!)
The air is leaking out too fast to pump it back in and ride it out, so I have to pull the damn thing off and fix it. Naturally it’s the back wheel, which is a pain in the ass to get off, what with the gear and chain to maneuver around, and it doesn’t have a quick-release. (Thank god I had the foresight to buy a wrench.) So I pull the wheel, patch the flat (thank god I had the foresight to buy a patch kit), pump it back up (thank god I had the foresight to buy a pump…), and listen to see if it’s leaking. Naturally, it is. Again, realization dawns on me.
I don’t have a flat.
I have three flats.
Three tiny holes right in the same general area. I have no clue what caused it, but it came in a cluster. So I patch the other two holes, using the last of my patches, pump it back up, and put it all together again. Thankfully this time it holds. I ride on down the street to my appointment, not too horribly late.
It’s around this time I hear from the shop, saying that they found the problem, and will have to keep it overnight, and put the new parts in in the morning. So I have to take the bus home, since it’s too far to bike. This involves 40 minutes of waiting, since our local bus system has been gutted from ‘mostly useless’ to ‘mind-blowingly worthless.’ But I make it home, without incident (or flats).
I feel so helpless. I lived like this most of my life, limping along on a bike and a near-useless public transit system, but having had a car for the last 2 years let me forget the horrors of pedestrianship. Today those horrors came flooding back.
But the really depressing part is, after all the money I’ve sunk into bike and parts, I’ve almost spent enough money to get another car.
