Bike trouble
Most Amsterdammers prize the mobility their bike gives them. The city’s streets are at times very narrow, and traffic is busy and slow. Biking through the city is free though, and a lot quicker than going by car or public transport. It’s no wonder that most visitors to Amsterdam are amazed to see so many bikes. Yes, they’re everywhere indeed.
I, too, think my bike is one of my most functional possessions. Even though it’s old, rusty, and held together by duct tape, it gives me my mobility and freedom, and I use it every day to get from A to B. Unfortunately I’ve been having a fair share of trouble with my bike lately. The chain was getting so worn down that it ran off of the cog wheels every few minutes or so. I still biked around with this problem for few weeks (months?), thus damaging the cog wheels to such an extent that at some point the bike just wasn’t bikeable anymore.
There was but one solution: I took my two-wheeled friend to the bicycle shop where they replaced the whole shebang for 20 euros. Quite a price for a poor old student like myself! It was working again beautifully after that though, and I was happy. The next day I was about to unlock my bike to go to uni, and found to my surprise that some idiot had locked his bike together with mine. That pissed me off, as I just spent my hard-earned pennies on reparations so that I could bike again. But well, I took public transport and figured the person whose lock it was would soon find out about his/her mistake and unlock it.
No such luck. Day after day I checked if my bike was still locked by that strange yellow lock to which I had no key. After a week I was about to go to the construction market and rent some mean-looking cutting tool to cut the lock with force. But lo ‘n behold - oh wonderful glory! - the unidentified lock had been taken off! At last! That day was today actually. I happily biked around Amsterdam again. I cycled through the city centre, along the canals, and went to uni. I felt whole again.
But the story goes on. On my way back home, the air pressure of my front tire seemed to be decreasing at an alarmingly fast pace. It was flat within a few minutes. I used someone’s bicycle pump to see if it was just a small leak. But alas, the leak was pretty big and I was forced to walk my bike all the way home. So now I have a leak to fix, but no tire reparation kit.
And in this manner problems have been haunting me and my bike for quite a while now. It’s becoming a royal pain in the ass. On the bright side, all bad things come in threes, isn’t that what they say? Well that means, as soon as I buy myself a reparation kit and fix the leak, no more trouble is to come… Right?
(knocking on wood…)
