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Getting ready to head home for the evening, last night (Sept. 18, 2008), I packed up my stuff, changed into my biking gear and headed out to where my bike had been securely locked while I was at work. I was a bit disappointed to find that my rear tire on my recumbent bike was flat. I had plenty of patches though, being an occasional commuter, I like to think I am prepared for such events. I removed the wheel and got the inner tube removed, patched and replaced in about 1o minutes. After pumping and pumping for much longer that it should have taken I noticed that it wasn’t holding more than 30psi and quickly dropped to nothing once I stopped. An hour later and 5 holes patched on the ancient rubber band I was kind enough to call an inner tube and I decided that there was no fixing the old oxidized piece of rubber.
The tube is about two or three years old and it turns out that my removing it from the tire stretched and cracked it, probably creating more holes that I had patches. Even if I did fix the ones I’d found, there’s no guarantee that I wouldn’t create more when re-installing the tube or that I wouldn’t get part way home before feeling that I was pushing my bike through sand on a beach as a new hole decided to show up and the tire deflates. I thought about any friends that might have a truck that could pick me up and called Debbi to whine about my situation (who doesn’t have a truck, but I just wanted to talk with her anyway). I knew however, that I’d just have to come back in the morning. My car is in the shop this week getting painted. Its supposed to be finished today. I found a body shop close to work so that I could commute on my bike and easily pick up my jeep when it was finished. Thinking that I’d have to at least get myself back to the area in the morning before any bike shops were open, I thought finding a way home seemed pretty useless.
Seeing that the sun was about half an hour from setting and no bike stores open at the time, I packed up and spent the night at the office on the most uncomfortable bed in the world. The building I work in has “health rooms” which are like small hotel rooms with a table, chair and a small bed for the employees when they are sick or work late and need a place to crash. Unfortunately, the cheap cot I slept on last night reminded me of the bed in Jerry Seinfeld’s parent’s condo in Florida. Everyone who slept on it ended up not being able to walk the next day with back problems (The Pen, The Cadillac) . The bed I slept in was sunken in the middle like a giant potato chip. I felt like I was being being bent into the shape of a banana all night long. The springs were uneven and hard so lying on my side was actually quite painful. The pillow (or what they seem to want to call a pillow) was almost completely flat and provided no support whatsoever for my head. I woke up with my neck feeling much worse than it did the night before. It was feeling fine last night. It’s not this morning.
I tossed and turned all night waking up several times and finally gave up trying to get any kind of good sleep at 6am. I walked back down the hall to my office and started working.
I am walking-distance from a theater in a mall so I decided to to see a movie last night (seeing as I didn’t have much else to do that was not work related). I saw Dark Night which started at 8pm. It was the only thing showing at a decent time - everything else either had already started or didn’t start till nearly 9:30 or 10pm. It was the second time I saw it and it was as good this time as the first. The nice thing about watching it last night was that there were only about 10 other people in the theater. I walked back from the theater to my office in the dark.
This morning about 9:00am the body shop called. My Jeep wont be done till next Wednesday.
