Sundays + Me + Bikes = Disaster

It isn’t ALWAYS bad, but I have had enough Sunday bike troubles that it feel that way.

Exhibit a:

The bike I chose to ride was having a hard time on the way to the train station.  After church, on the way home it just seemed to be worse.  The chain wasn’t moving well and when I would peddle it was hard to do and would click a lot.  The back tire was skewed and was rubbing against other parts of the bike every rotation.  To top it off,  the tires were slowly leaking.  By the time I was on half a mile from the school I was red, SO very sweaty, tired, and thirsty.  With how hard it was to ride the blasted bike I figured it would be easier to just walk with the bike.  After walking it a few steps a guy in his shop on the side of the road offered to air up the tires.  I accepted.  After airing them up he realized how many other problems the bike had.  He went about pounding and loosening and tightening things.  He instructed me to sit down.  

When I sat in the sun he immediately motioned for me to move to the shade.  I drank some cold water while he ‘worked’ on the bike.  I don’t things he really knew what he was doing.  He had some tools out, but the work he did mostly consisted of pounding different parts of the bike.  When he finished he let me know it’s be 30 baht.  I gave him 20 and was on my way.  The bike was a little easier to pedal, but still not as easy as it should have been.

Exhibit b:

The train station in across the river which means we have to ride across a bridge.  The bridge has a fairly steep ramp on both sides.  The ride down the incline is great.  The ride up is not my favorite.  I like to build up some speed beforehand and then stand up to pedal as I go up the ramp.  This particular Sunday I gained some good speed and as I was going over the 3 tiny wanna-be speed bumps my tire hit just the wrong way.  The handlebars lurched.  The bike started going toward the edge of the ramp!  I tried to correct and over corrected.  I turned back the other way.  I put my legs down.  I lost a shoe!  Somehow the tire collided with the back of my leg.  I came within an inch of rocketing off the edge of the ramp which would have sent me down 5 feet into a mess of shrubs and trees.  2 weeks later and I still have the remains of bruises on my legs.

Exhibit c:

We were at the stop light in the right turn lane.  The light turned green and we all started to go.  I pedaled once and the pedals stopped.  In the middle of the intersection I couldn’t move.  I hopped of my bike and started running with it.  Once I got out of the intersection I pulled over only to discover that the chain was off and stuck.  We all tried to pull it out to no avail.  Luckily there was a guy a few shops down who had helped us in the past.  I walked the bike over and he unscrewed lots of pieces and got it put back together.   He did it free of charge and now I try to wave every time we ride past his shop.