BUT HOBOS PREFER COFFEE IN THE MORNING

When my buddy Millsy was down visiting, I let him have my bicycle during the day and I drove the Subaru. He complained that the tire was flat and that he couldn't figure out how to pump air into it since the air nozzle was weird. I told him that the tire was not flat, and he was just fat*.

That was a month ago, and was long forgotten on Monday morning when I decided to get back into the cycling-to-work thing. As I peddled through my apartment complex, I realized how horribly flat the back tire was, and how this destroyed my ability to steer and control. "No problem," I thought, and I went to the gas station across the street. But the bastards had no air pump station. How horrible.

Fortunately there was another gas station two blocks further. I rode the out-of-control bike down the sidewalk Graham-styles to this station, where I discovered yet another missing air pump station. At this point, I would have liked to turn back home, shove the bike in my wagon and get to work on time. But there was another gas station just another 2 blocks down.

At the 3rd gas station, there was an air pump. But the capitalist bastards wanted fifty cents for their air. I ran into the station's convenience store and bought a bottle of orange juice, leaving me with the required quarters. I set down my bottle and attempted to pump the tire, but for some unexplicable it had a bizarre nozzle that didn't work with the gas station's standard air pump. fuck. In my sad attempt to make the two incompatible systems work together, I ended up releasing all the remaining air in my tire. It was now unridable.

I would have turned home, except that two more blocks futher there was an REI store, which is where I bought my bike. They'd have a bike service station where they could fix me up and get me on my way. So I walked. It was a hot California morning and I was turning into a gross sweaty computer programmer. Gross. Eventually I arrived at REI where I discovered they weren't to open for another half hour. Shit.

So I walked the rest of the way to work. To alleviate my frustration, I decided to take a swig of my orange juice. But I left the damn juice on top of the air machine at gas station #3. Damn.

At least some hobo got a delicious bottle of concentrated orange juice for breakfast.

1 Comments:

Jodie said...

good thing you work with polite people... otherwise it could've been ugly "hey jesse, you look like you're melting- what a stink!"

6:22 AM

 

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