Actually, it's quite hilarious
November 17, 2009
Me: Sure. Library closes in 30 minutes.
We decided to meet at a bar near Wilhelmina Park. There were three other patrons sitting at the bar. It was immediately noticeable that the woman was extremely drunk (it was now around 10:30pm). I got a small beer, sat at the reading table (many bars here have these long tables with periodicals and good light for reading). I was getting deep into the definitive aspects of commercial trusts and enjoying the laughter of the bar folks; the guy across from me was reading the Dutch paper and got up twice in 2o minutes for a cigarette. The drunk lady and her gentleman friend went outside also for a cigarette. When I looked up from page 15, they were dancing wildly and singing outside the windows, pointing and laughing at the bartender, who was clearly a good friend of theirs.
Fabian arrived, late and a little harried. "What's up?" I asked. "I will show you later," he said and ordered us some beers. Predictably, we chitchatted about the happenings since our last hang-out more than we reviewed the introduction of his thesis (he is getting a master's in chemistry, but I am only being paid - in the form of beer and food - for grammatical critique). Eventually, we finished, closed the tab, and went outside to go home. I fished my bike lights from my book bag, took off the make-shift seat cover (a plastic bag from the bookshop of the Boijman museum in Rotterdam) and tied it to the back rack. I unlocked Rusty, and turned towards Fabian. That's when I saw this:
I erupted into convulsive laughter. "What happened!?" He wasn't exactly sure. A few days ago, his chain began to fall off regularly. He would stop, put the chain back on track, and ride on. A day ago, he notice his tire was a little flat and the the rim appeared to be a little bent. All of these conditions converged as he left the Uithof campus to meet me, causing him to walk his bike here. At some point, while he was walking the bicycle, the wheel completely disintegrated into the pathetic, limp versions of each of its components shown here.
"What will you do?" He had called a bike shop earlier, and it would cost EU60 for parts and labor (about the same price as getting another used bicycle). His strategy was to drag the bike to the nearest bike shop that looked affordable. Rather than leave it at the pub and take the bus home or walk, as I suggested, he would deliver the bike now, when humiliation would be mitigated by the darkness and the chances of mockery by passersby were (theoretically) lower. I agreed to come along, for emotional support. And so we proceeded towards town, me walking with Rusty, Fabian rolling on his front wheel, lifting up the back.
The rim seemed shapeless, suggesting that it had completely broken or bent. However, somehow there was no actual severance anywhere that would enable us to remove the rim from the bike. And so, as we walked, the rubber of the tire, the deflated inner tube, and the shriveled up rim strip dragged along the sidewalk, making a sort of humming and mumbling against the pavers. Simultaneously, the awkward sections of rim scraped and screeched as he did his best to keep it high above the ground.
A police car passed us and shortly turned back for us. "What happened?" asked the woman officer, who was driving. Perhaps it looked like a botched bike theft. As Fabian attempted to explain this to the police officer, I suddenly found the laughter difficult to stifle. He started with "Well, a few days ago...", in his Swiss-German English, standing over his delapidated bike. I laughed as quietly as I could, and the male officer in the passenger side was struggling to hold it in as well. She accepted his story.
Fabian: What is the best way to repair this?
Male officer, leaning forward in his seat: The best way?
Fabian: Yes
Male officer: The best way? The best way is to steal the wheel of another bike. But this is illegal, isn't it?
(Fabian and I looked at each other and shrugged.)
Fabian: Sure, of course. I meant, where is the cheapest bike shop?
Me: Is it possible to get credit for another used bike if we trade this one?
He answered our questions in a much less reproachful tone, and they went on their way. We continued, sure that we would find a shop soon. We passed two very nice bike shops (either didn't appear to sell used bikes or, even if they did, they would be unaffordable used bikes). I rolled Rusty off the sidewalk to let a pedestrian pass. He was wearing all black, a cigarette secured between his pursed lips, the tip glowing in the dark. When he passed us, the cigarette almost fell out of his mouth from the huge smile that swept across his face. Already giggling, I again fell into hysterical laughter. Fabian had to stop because he was laughing so hard. The guy turned around a few steps behind us. In an English accent he simply stated, "Actually, it's quite hilarious."
"If my bike were an animal, we would have killed it by now to put it out of its misery." We walked and had to cross the street at one point to avoid dragging this carcass of a bike in front of a bar extremely crowded with young people. By the time we got to Janskerkhof, I was pretty sure we would end up taking it to the shop where I got Rusty's tire replaced last month. Behind us, I heard the clinking of a bicycle and the amused, cheerful laughter of two girls. The laughter quieted to suppressed giggles as they passed us, and resumed a few feet ahead of us. The girl riding on the back of the bike looked like she could have fallen off.
At a few points, we had to stop for a breather, and eventually we ended up at "my" bike shop. As he locked his bike to the post out front, I read the sign on the window. The shop had moved. Fabian was a little depressed by this news, but we used our limited Dutch to deduce that it was just around the corner from here, near Utrecht's very own miniature red light district. He set off to walk home, which I estimated would take about an hour. Fifteen minutes later, I locked Rusty outside my apartment, talked to Vi a little, and called Fabian to see how it was going.
Fabian: Oh, I'm home.
Me: That was fast.
Fabian: I found a bike that was unlocked so I borrowed it.
(This happens a lot here. Don't worry; the next day, he returned it).
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