03/05/2004 - 2:59 a.m. | it's almost over now

Well, that was an unqualified success. So, once again, in somewhat of a hurry (this time for a psych test, which I guess should be a little more important than "Scrubs" in my mind), I'm pedaling like a madman along Illinois, and the good old chain flies off. Again. That's the fourth time in as many days. Normally, I'd stop and fix it right there, but since I have this test to get to, and I have my doubts about whether the scantron machine would enjoy big brown grease turds all over my form, I drag the bike along in a hurry. Turns out that was a mistake. The chain got caught up in the gap between the gear and axle, and all of a sudden, bike ain't going nowhere. I can't even roll it anymore. The bike tire just sticks. Fuck it. Fine. I run to class to take the test, which is not a part of this stoy except to note that I hate those bullshit tests with all, none, or two options as possible choices. Such trickery. Anyway, when I finish, I walk over to Walgreens to buy some vinyl gloves (because that's the closest I have to a temporary solution) and then I get to work at trying to dislodge the chain. No luck at all. Well, maybe some luck. It starts drizzling.

To fix the bike, I'm going to have to get it home, but it still isn't rolling, so I pick up the back tire and sort of drag it along like that for a while. It was pretty tiring and awkward, though, so by the time I reached the engineering quad, I just hoisted it onto my shoulders and carried it like a man. It started raining harder. Luckily for me, of course, I have the best sort of sense of humor in these situations, so I just kept laughing. Fuck the little Asians giving me looks; just made me laugh harder. Big nasty grease stains on my pants? Harder still. And when a fucking hobo came up to me and tried to ask me for some money, I told him I had problems of my own and lurched on, full-on hyucking by that point.

Eventually, I did make it home, but my bike was still completely useless, and that sort of thing really pisses me off. So, learn by doing, motherfucker. I went up, grabbed some tools, and started taking the bike apart. It's pretty much pouring by now, so I'm alternating mumbling to myself or screaming curses to God. "Listen, man!" I say. "I couldn't possibly be Job. He had faith in You in the first place!" Either way, strange looks from passerby. I get the tire off and manage to pry the chain out of its horrid little spot. My clothes are all soaked through, and I can barely see, and my efforts to warm myself through mental effort aren't going so well, so occasionally I have to run around and spaz out a little. But, I learned a little about bikes today, and I got it mostly fixed, but I think there is an overall problem with the tires being too fat, and I cannot afford new tired right now, so I guess I'm just going to have to learn to take it. It actually really wasn't that difficult to do; I just happened to pick the worst possible time for it to go down. I think I may have been in absolute misery, but that's just speculation.

And then it broke again. Honestly, the more I think on it, the more I think this may have been the worst day of my life, at least as far as unfortunate little events go. So I walked to the crossing guard thing and stood out thre dripping and I think shaking, but I'm not sure, and that darn girl who takes the bus came so I had to wait for her, and the memory of all of this is pretty unpleasant, even if I was laughing at the time. So yes, I am without transportation, and it's driving me nuts because I wanted to do a bunch of errands tomorrow, and just the very idea of this sort of unfinished business kind of burrows a hole in my head.

Work was, um, pretty unworky, besides some dumb lifeguard taking the keys so I couldn't get in for a while. I read and listened to shitty music and suffered through an awful headache. And now I am home, and I watched Cabin Fever again, and Brytne is drunk and ran out of the apartment wearing Kyle's Braves blanket as some sort of a cape. Earlier, she was wearing his robe and insisting that she be called Hef. That's all I got, man.