Old number 64

My fancy bike is broken and I'm too embarrassed to take it down to the shop and admit that I don't know how to fix it.  It's got a bubble or something in the rear brake system which has progressively been causing the brake to perform more and more poorly.  In the course of the 20 years that I've been hanging around at Absolute Bikes, I've maybe had a bike in for a legit repair two or three times.  And I've never filled out a repair ticket in the past 17 years when, as an official employee, I was always able to fix all of my bikes on my own, or hang the broken one in the stand after work and ask the mechanics for help as-needed.

No more.  My new job pretty much prevents me from working for the shop this coming summer, just as it did last summer.  So my opportunities to get free advice or assistance from the pros after-hours, in exchange for beers, are basically gone.  I could take advantage of one of them, and beg for help, but that just feels so lame.  So I'm stuck.  One of the things I like about all the other bikes in my garage is that I know how to fix all of them.  This new bike, with its fancy suspension, indexed shifters, and disc brakes is quite foreign to me.  And, at the moment I've neither the time nor the inclination to learn how to repair these components on my own.

So, as I said, I'm stuck.  My new bike has now been broken, just hanging there, unused, in the garage for two weeks.  Drives me crazy.

Fortunately, when it comes to other bikes to ride in the interim, I'm not without a few pleasant options.

So pretty.
Click to enlarge

Today I rode my Retrotec, old number 64.  It was super-fun!  Up Super-moto and across Newham.  A great ride!  Something about that bike, dunno what it is... the way it handles, the way it rails through corners, that it was my first-bike... Hard to put a finger on it.  But it never fails to disappoint.

Love that bike!

But I've gotta get off the dime and just eat my pride and take the big, broken fancy bike down to the shop and drop it off and let the pros fix it up for me.  Otherwise it's just gonna hang there forever, languishing until it turns back to dust.  It sure as heck ain't gonna fix itself.

Maybe I'll take it in tomorrow.  It shouldn't be such a big deal, huh.

Yeah.  I'll take it in on Sunday.  And then go ride the Retro again!