Zen and the art of bicycle maintenance

The place where I live now, Emuville, is about a mile from Holy College. Not bad. Not that far. Still, a bit far to walk. So, of course, I have the classsic studential vehicle: an ancient bike.

One Fish bought that bike off a mailwoman for a ridiculous price. The bike is equally ridiculous. Nobody will take you seriously when you are riding a bicycle, I discovered. You can ride and quote Freud; nobody would care.

But that isn't the problem.

I spent no more than a week with my as-yet-nameless bike when one day, on the way back from Holy, I discovered the front wheel to be, to put it politely, somewhat flat. That is - I Holmesly decided - an obvious case of a "Flat Tire", something that I'm used to happening to my car, but never yet happened to a bike when I was around. Still, it's supposed to be a common and not a very big problem. I walked the bike to Emuville and hitch hiked to school for the rest of the week.

People who saw me do that told me, "I thought you had a bicycle." I said, "Yes, but they're punctured.

They said, "Fix it, then. It's really easy."

Weird.

I'm aware that fixing a flat bike tire isn't very hard. But I thought it does require use of some materials that I don't have on me in Emuville. Nobody could explain how can I fix my bike using only spit and good will. Maybe it's not that easy after all.

Anyway, I did acquire the materials, and fixed the wheel (it's really easy) eventually, and rode happily for a day and a half, until the tire went flat again.

Annoying. Well, it was my first try at fixing bike wheels. It's natural for me not to get it quite right. I did it again.

The next day, when I got on the bike to ride to Holy again, I discovered it was flat.

I hitch hiked, and when I came back that evening I turned my bike over and cross-examined it. What the hell is happening here!? I demanded of it. Either you're jammed or your'e not, but make up your chain!

Since I couldn't find anything wrong with the wheel, I pumped it and rode to Holy for yet another fascinating day. At the eve of that day, slightly more educated, I walked out to find it flat again. Obviously it was not punctured in the usual sense - the air just seeped out through warps in space/time. So, there was only one thing to do: ride and pump, pump and ride. Eventually, I thought either the hole will be discovered or the wheel will decide that it's okay after all. At the third pump of the second day, it decided otherwise, and committed suicide - that's to say, blew up, shredded, in my face, leaving me temporarily deaf (and dumb).

I'm a positive thinker. That's a solution, too, I thought, and invested a free morning in going around to Town, found a brand new tire (both the inside and the outside - the whole town had only one of those of the kind my special bike needed). I took the old one off. Put the new one on. Pumped it. And that's all.

Two days later, the back wheel went flat.

I fixed it. It's really easy. That's not the point.

The point now is what's keeping me awake at night. A horrible thought that occurred to me.

As you may remember, for the past several months me and May were going around the US in a problematic car called Marvin. A car that, besides the fact that it had a back seat, I can't say much in favor of. At the end of that trip, we, as you might recall, got rid of it, in hope of it being squashed into a cube soon. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. But if it did...

I heard of reincarnation, but...

My bike...

Marvin?