How I Ended Up Sitting In Dog Pee Next To A Broken Bike On A Wednesday

The week before last, I went to get my bike to ride to work. The back tire was flat. I pumped it full of air, couldn't discern any noticeable leak, and started my ride. At a couple of red lighs, I checked the tire. It seemed ok.

I got to work and took it up to my office instead of locking it on the street. 20 minutes later, the tire was flat.

So I took the wheel off the bike and carried it on the train home. That weekend, I went to the bike shop around the corner and they replaced the tube. I was happy. They put the tire at a higher pressure than I'd been bold enough to do with my hand pump and cheap pressure gauge. Life was good.

I took the wheel back on the train to the office and got it back on the bike. I spent a good half hour messing with the brakes. The last time I took off the wheels to change from wide, mountain bike tires to narrow, city tires, I didn't quite get the back brakes right. The front has disc brakes which are apparently unbreakable. The back has -- whatever they're called -- brake pads that push against the tire rim. And they weren't quite pushing hard enough to effectively brake.

But I thought I had them on there pretty well. Both wheels are a little warped (this is a $200 Target Schwinn), so it would never be perfect.

I got on the bike at the end of the day and started the long, slow, uphill climb home. I work at the Montgomery St Muni stop. I got to the next stop (Powell) and knew something was amiss. Then, between Powell and Civic Center (where we start to get into the strip club/good place to score some heroin part of Market St, the back wheel started jiggling. Yes, jiggling. I stopped, flipped it over, tried my best at tightening what there was to tighten, and got back on.

It got worse as I made my way from Civic Center to Van Ness, the least nice place on my route to be stuck, working on a bike without tools or knowledge.

I pressed onward, knowing I couldn't take my bike on the train, especially not at rush hour, and that I wasn't close enough to a bus route I knew that would take me home (though I discovered one just this week when the trains were all busted), and I couldn't lock it up in this neighborhood, especially since I'd neglected to bring both of my locks, figuring I'd just bring it up to the office.

I made it up the hill to the Castro, then over by Duboce Park, and then I just gave up. The wheel felt like it was going to just fall off.

Duboce Park is one of many parks in SF that looks like the park on the opening to Full House. It's just a big grassy rectangle on a hill with Victorian houses all around. It's always full of people walking their dogs.

Thankful for cell phones, I called M-N who bravely put both boys in the car at the witching hour and headed over. I disassembled my bike and sat on a crest I thought (apparently incorrectly) was out of the common peeing territories and waited.

She rescued me. I got home. I took the wheel back to the shop. They said the axle broke. A $10 part, but $35 labor, probably not worth it for a year-old Target bike.

Now I need to get a new bike. So I'm going to likely go to REI and spend more than $200. I looked on this awesome site: PropertyRoom but I think it's better for someone who knows what he's doing, which isn't me.

That's my story.