Now moving into another chaotic New Moon set to fall on Wednesday night. A week prior, last Wednesday, as I was riding home from work I noticed the back tire of my bike was low on air, indeed almost flat! Uh great! Just what I needed! A puncture!! I should not be getting punctures, my tires are the toughened thorn proof tires and inside the tubes are the fluid that blocks any punctures that may form. Such a combination had worked wonders, being without punctures for many years. But I suppose nothing is fool proof.
So after I gotten home I went to the mall to get a new puncture repair kit. These days they have the stick-on patches which eliminates the frustrating practice of applying glue which never seems to stick properly and the patch falls off. So though it costs a bit more, the stick-on patches makes it worth while.
Then I went to locate the puncture using an old trick I knew from my childhood years when I first acquired a bicycle and seemed to get more punctures than one can poke a stick at. That is, inflate the tube and place it in a tub of water, the location of the puncture becomes immediately apparent.
So by using this method.... Alas!!!.... not a puncture at all but a faulty valve! Indeed the fault was at the base of the valve!! Uhhh great!!! That will mean I will need to take the bicycle to the repair shop. It's likely I would be needing the tube replaced which involves removing the back wheel with the gear assembly and etc, and I remember back in my poverty years when I had to do all the repairs myself and spending seemingly endless hours trying to re-align the wheel and the gears when it comes to place the wheel back on. Nowadays I leave it to the experts. It will throw a spanner into my budgetary works but it sure beats spending half a day of my usually busy weekends doing it myself and probably not doing as good of a job.
I therefore booked my bicycle into the repair shop at the earliest possible time - Monday - tomorrow.
Meanwhile living without my bicycle which was a large part of my fitness regime in recovering from my heart event. First the trick of getting to my physio session on Thursday. I usually ride my bicycle to the bus interchange at the station, then take the bus the rest of the way to the hospital. So now just drive the car to the station. Complicating factor, parking at the station is NOT free, and I loathe to give any more money to the govt than I already give.
Solution, park further away, say, at a park. However I knew the council would be up to the trick, knowing that 99.9% of the population are equally loathe to pay the govt any more money so would park slightly further away from the station and walk a bit extra distance. So the council places parking restrictions designed to thwart most people who would catch the train\bus to work for 8 hours. Place a time limit on such parking that is less than 8 hours!! Typically about three hours.
However the time between taking the bus to the physio, the 1 hour physio session, and coming back is about two and a half hours.
Anyway to cut a long story short, I found a place to park at a local park which turned out to be 2 kms from the station, and there was a three hour parking limit but I decided I should make it within the time limit. It would take me 20 minutes to walk to the station to the bus, and so I worked out if I catch the usual bus back, I should arrive at the park in just under the three hour limit.
However as it ALWAYS happens when you don't need it to happen, after the physio session, the only time in all those weeks of attending the physio sessions my usual bus would arrive early and thus I miss it just happened on THAT day!!! This meant I had to wait 20 minutes for the next bus. This meant I would struggle to get back to my car within the three hour limit.
Anyway the later bus came, and when I got back to the station, I must have walked the quickest two kms on record!! And when I arrived back at the park I saw council vehicles around including one parked near my car. Dang!!! That is all I need, a bloody parking ticket!!! It turned out I arrived at the park within five minutes of the end of the three hours, and so I made it to my car literally with a minute to spare, with the ranger just waiting to pounce on me to write out the ticket!!! Talk about a very narrow escape!!!! What my heart does NOT need!!!!
Now my bicycle is in the shop, I took it in today to save the bother of trying to get it in first thing in the morning and rushing off to work only to be late for work. Hopefully all will go relatively smoothly and not costing too much...... it needed a service anyway......
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