Zen and a lack of bicycle maintanence

At the Bootleg Festival NYC, I met some great people. One of them wrote a self reflective blog posting today that had nothing to do with films, but instead, what he had learnt about himself from changing a bicycle tyre.

Seeing as I too have had some bicycle adventures recently, I was inspired to write my own.

You can read Neil's wonderful account here

And ... without further ado... here is my effort at self-reflection:

My wife bought me a bike for my 40th. It is amazing. I arrive at work 3 to 5 minutes earlier than I would by public transport, dripping with sweat but with a sense of accomplishment and wellbeing.

The bike is a proper bike. Not a flimsy racer or trendy mountain bike but a sturdy machine built like a tank. Oh my god is it heavy.

In addition to being filled with lead, the bike has some other features:

• a luggage rack. Amazing. I have used it to carry a pair of roller skates and I didn't notice a thing.
• a little bell that makes a good sound - not gay at all.
• a dynamo powered front headlight. Totally brilliant.
• a back wheel lock, bolted onto the frame of the bike. Not quite so brilliant. You cannot use the bike unless the key is in the lock - so the key can't be on your keychain. Can you imagine what would happen if you lost the key? I didn't have to imagine this as I lost the key in less than a week.

Neil wrote about his experiences of repairing a puncture and what that taught him about himself. I thought perhaps I should do some self reflecting, too.

Much like Neil, I was a soon to be discovered cycling talent.

'I don't know,' I would say to the press, as flash bulbs exploded around me, 'I guess it's just something inside of me, a previously unleashed force.'
'One more question Mr. Willis-Jones! Do you think that anyone could be this great, if they too... got a bike?'
Gazing intently at the horizon I would ponder this before turning back to the hoards of reporters, 'No.' I would say.

Now onto the self reflective part.

First of all let's address the lost key to the rear wheel lock. My first reaction to this was extreme sadness. Something akin to discovering your goldfish had died: Not the end of the world, but you'd just given it a name and started to develop a relationship, and now, there it was, floating on the surface surrounded by the mixture of fishfood and cocaine that deep down you knew was a bad idea, even though it was almost the weekend.

My wife drove to my work and delivered the spare key. 'I knew that lock was a bad idea for Matt' she said.

You see, that's why she bought me this hardcore no-nonsense bike. She knew that anything less durable would quickly suffer various failings which I would fail to repair and it would be a remarkably short amount of time before the bike all but evaporated.

Determined to show her that I was able to deal with this first hurdle, I announced that I was not going to use the back wheel lock anymore, indeed I would find a way to break the key in the lock, so the lock would be left permenantly open. I have a much better chain lock anyhow.

She suggested I just go to the shop where she bought it and get another set of keys, or perhaps get them to remove the lock altogether. 'Remember I told you they'd fix anything on the bike for free within the first 12 months?'. I decided to just leave the key in the lock. That way I didn't have to figure out a way break it or go to the shop and be laughed at by all the clever bike people.

I didn't worry too much that some prankster might lock my back wheel for a laugh and run off with the key. Although it did cross my mind.

A few days later, the bulb went in the front light. It's dark when I cycle home and definitely not a good idea to be without lights. But the rear light still worked brilliantly and I could only imagine what the people in the bike shop would think about me now - I'd only had the bike for a couple of weeks and already I'd lost a key and somehow broken the bulb in the front light.

Weeks passed. Then came The Good Day. The Good Day was amazing. It came after three increasingly stressful and problem-ridden days at work.

On The Good Day, I took off my bicycle helmet as I approched the revolving doors of NRK, and I was filled with inner peace and bliss. 'You know what, World? Today... today you cannot break me. Problems? Bring 'em on! Show me what you've got! Today I can deal with anything!'

And you know what? All of the problems I feared had vanished. It was an incredibly smooth day. It was, in fact, a joy. At two minutes past midnight however, I noticed the time on my monitor and I knew The Good Day had come to an end. I was now venturing into the unknown...

At 1 am, I go to the bike to find that the rear light had stopped working. Assuming it was the batteries, I went to the nearby petrol station - where the only staff at night is the guy making the hotdogs - and asked for a small screwdriver. He explained that 'they' never left anything at night but he'd see what he could do. He came back with a screwdriver that was probably too big but I tried it anyway. Very quickly I had almost completely stripped the screw head and my head was filled with a vision of the entire staff at the bike shop, standing around in lycra shorts, pointing and laughing at me: 'Don't you even know how to use a screwdiver?!'

As I set off into the night, dressed in black, with no lights, I realised I had forgotten my helmet at work. Half way home, going down a steep hill, the handlebars came loose.

The next day I trundled the bike through town and into the shop, where I encountered a delightfully pleasant and helpful man. He fixed the handlebars in a jiffy and apologised profusely about the trouble's I had encountered. He didn't mention anything about the nearly stripped screw head on the back light. He wasn't able to replace the bulb right then as I hadn't left enough time before I had to leave to work, but he assurred me I could come in anytime tomorrow an he'd fix it no problem.

I rode to work on my new bike. The sun was shining. Things don't get better than this. I was actually looking forward to going back to the shop the next day not just becuase I'd get the bulb fixed but becasue I'd get to talk to that nice man again.

That night, shortly before midnight and still techincally within the same 24 hours as the back light and handlebar failure, I unlocked the bike to discover the back tyre was flat.

The bike remained chained up for the next 4 days and I refamiliarized myself with the Oslo Metro system.

I then took the bike to another bike shop, much closer to work, and was greated by yet another charming and jovial bicycle repair man. He joked that he wouldn't be able to do anything about the weight of the bike, and suggested that maybe I'd like him to remove the annoying back wheel lock while he took care of the tyre? He couldn't promise he'd be able to get a replacement bulb for the front light though. I guess I shall find out in a couple of hours when I pick it up.

Oh I should also mention that I found a key in my bag the other day. I'm pretty sure it's the key to the back wheel lock.

There hasn't been much self reflection in this account, so I'll read it through quickly and see what I think. Ok. Back in a minute.

Oh dear. Well, The verdict isn't good. I appear to be a lazy, irresponsible paranoid idiot. With a bike.