an eventful ride home

Well, I started work today, and while that is something that I really should and really will tell you about sometime, and was actually intending to tell you about this time, I'm not going to..yet. Because I have been distracted by my very eventful ride home from work, and thought that, while work was great and everything, this ride home was far more humorous.


So, I was riding my beautiful, afore mentioned bike home from work, following Hannah as closely as possible (as I do not yet know the way home on my own) through the curb-to-curb traffic at rush hour and I noticed that my bike petal seemed more wobbly than usual. I considered the fact that my bike is not exactly up to Lance Armstrong-standard, and that I frequently wonder if it will all come clattering apart around me when I ride over particularly brutal pot holes and decided that it was probably nothing to worry about. However, when a few stoplights later the wobbling had worsened considerably, I yelled at Hannah and pulled over. I said, "my bike petal feels weird," leaned down to examine it, pushed it ever so slightly...and it fell off.

After Hannah and I had laughed for a sufficient amount of time, we tried our hand at bike petal repair. We failed. But, as you might guess, my predicament drew quite a bit of attention (I mean to say--even more attention than I draw with every move I make). The above picture is of the kind gentlemen who helped me fix my bike (the first time) along with their really enormous pipe. They generously offered me some of whatever they were smoking, but I graciously declined. I felt especially good about this decision when I heard the horrendous cough of one of the men after he took a hit.

Anyways, after my petal was fixed, we continued on our way, until it once again began to wobble, we tried to push through, it wobbled more, etc. The second time the petal fell off, Hannah utilized her excellent Vietnamese to find a bike repair man on the sidewalk. I paid a mere 5,000 VND to have my petal fixed--hopefully for good this time.

The bike repairman's wife offered me this very helpful stool to sit on as I waited. I'm sure it must have been highly entertaining to observe my attempts to sit on and rise from the stool, although it was actually suprisingly comfortable once I got down there.

End of story: I'm very glad Hannah was with me. We made it home just fine, supper was waiting, and there was pineapple for dessert. That's happily ever after if there ever was such a thing.