Bicycle Breakdown

I was riding home on Thursday night, and I couldn't get first gear. I thought that maybe I had sand in the derailleur and that maybe it was all gunged up, so I stopped to wiggle it and see if that helped. It didn't. And then the wire that went from the gear switch to the derailleur came off in my hand.

Now, instead of my (frankly ridiculous) 27 gears on my bike, I had two. One that was too high, and one that was much too high. I phoned S on my cellphone, which had about 10 seconds of battery life left in it, and asked if she could come and get me from the bike shop, and then I rode there.

They said that they could fix it while I waited, but I said "Oh no, don't worry, I've got a ride coming." That way they could clean and service it, and stop that irritating clicking in my left pedal that's been there for ages. That was just before 6.

So I waited for S, and chatted to the people in the shop. It turned out that the original branch of the shop was in Berlin, and wife of the couple that owned it was German, whilst the husband was American. So we had a lot to chat about.

I phoned S from the shop phone, to see where she was, and the traffic was grim, but she was on the way. Anyway, S arrived at abotu 10 to 7. She hadn't been able to find the shop, and had taken so long that the boys had weed themselves. Meanwhile, I'd been making conversation for an hour with the people in the shop. When S arrived, she was tense, and the boys were wet (but I didn't know). I'd sorted out two bikes for D and A to try out, and there was a big, wet dog, and a very little puppy in the shop, that the boys were interested in.

While I was pottering in the shop, I remembered that D and A had somehow got hold of my speedometer from my bike. They had put it somewhere special to look after it, and then forgotten where. They remembered after about 3 days, and it didn't work any more. So I thought I'd get a new one.

You know when you go to a shop to buy a speedometer for your bike, and you say "I'd like a speedometer" and they say "What do you want it to do?" and you say "Tell me how fast I'm going. And how far I've been." And they say "For five £/$ more, you can have one that tells you your average speed", and that seems like a bargain. And they say "For 5 $/£ more, you can have a wireless one," and that seems like a bargain. And they say "... you can have one that can store two trips" , "... you can have one that measures your heartrate", "... you can have one that measures your cadence [that's pedalling speed, non-cyclists]", "... you can have one that counts calories", "... you can have one that shows where you were at the same time yesterday so you can race yourself", ... "... you can have one with a GPS device that shows where you are on a live satellite linked up map, and plots the position of other cyclists, nearby restaurants and a display of the weather". And you only really want one that tells you how fast you're going, and how far, but you end up with a small laptop computer attached to your handlebars?

Well, it was nothing like that. I said "I'd like a new speedometer." The man in the shop reached over, and gave me one. I said "What's that do?" He said it did everything you could want. I tried to explain that I might be able to want a lot. He said "It's got average speed". I said "It doesn't tell me what the weather is going to be in the next 5 minutes." He looked blank and said "It's got everything you could want. We don't sell any others." So that's the one I bought.

I got the bus to work this morning, and then picked up my bike when I'd finished. We'd chatted for a long time about houses - the shop owners are looking at buying a house near-ish to us, but the house they looked at yesterday wasn't so good - it was too near the freeway. They had looked at another today - they showed me the details and we chatted about that - it was nice on the outside, but a bit pricey (they said). ON the inside, everything was a bit old.