Bike – Acquired and road ready

Ass pain – Received and conquered (booyah)

Stamina to take on a long distance bike ride – Questionable

Two out of three ain’t bad.* So I took off into the distance, with no specific plan or destination.  Just gonna go until I get tired.  I have noticed a bike path by my house before and decide to investigate where it leads.  I’m about 5 miles down the path when my back tire locks in place.  It’s come slightly off-kilter and is rubbing against the brake pads.  After serious inspection, as if I know what I’m looking at, I decide to unhook the back tire thingy, tighten up the other thingys, and see if that works.  All my troubleshooting techniques come from Nintendo.  If blowing on it doesn’t work, turn it off and back on.  Well, my extensive knowledge of clicky, turny, wheely things paid off and I got it to work enough to ride again.  But I didn’t feel like pushing my luck, so I turned around and went home.

Here is the text message exchange to my personal bike mechanic:

Me: My bike did that back tire thing again 😦  …4 miles from home …And I kinda fixed it enough to get home!  Go me!
PBM: Nice wrench work!  Describe said problem to me again using your most adept mechanical and technical parlance…
Me: The circular gizmo connected to the latter half of my go-machine slightly slipped in the metal cage and slid against the stop-button, making it impossible for the go-machine to continue going.  I unscrewed the obvious mechanism, realigned the parts, and tightened up the screws.  Asked a law enforcement agent to finish the tightening, but alas, even he did not have the strength necessary to satiate the machine.
PBM: Touche, Collier.  By my tally, it’s 3 points for that move.  1 for the sarcastic backslapping, 1 for making it actually quite understandable, and 1 for playing damsel in distress card.

*Ain’t is a terrible word to say, and even worse to actually spell out.  Apologies.