Perhaps riding dutch up and down Shanghai has finally taken a toll. Or maybe I shouldn’t blame the person sitting behind me, but take a good hard look at my fat ass in the mirror. Either way, Julie finally succumbed to my smothering love and had to get her first part replaced.
A lonely part, naked in the dark
After taking the day off from work (hey, this was a serious emergency), I rode to a bike repair shop close to my house. I walked in on four Chinese dudes shoveling food into their mouths. I asked them if they fixed bikes, and they nodded in the affirmative, and then I stood their like a fool for two minutes while they ate before I realized that their nodding didn’t actually mean they were about to get up and help. I stuck my head in again and they were still eating; apparently, business takes a backseat to a greasy lunch. I pooped in my hand and threw the feces at them, then rode Julie away, gently stroking her and whispering: “It’s going to be OK, baby, it’s going to be OK.”
The next shop was closed, and right when I was about to give up and go home and shoot Julie in the spokes, I came across a tiny shop with a 14 year old kid feeding a caged up beagle. I should have known that putting Julie in the hands of this sadistic little brat would be a bad idea, but time was short, so I asked him to replace the pedal and then closed my eyes and held my breath.
I now have the Luke Skywalker of Shanghai bikes: apparently, he couldn’t replace just the pedal, but had to remove the silver pedal crank entirely. As dark fate would have it, the only crank he had left was a black one, which meant that Julie’s two cranks are now like Paul McCartney on the right and Michael Jackson on the left. Well, MJ from the early 80’s, that is.
It don’t matter if you’re black or white…as long as you can get me to the convenience store out front, I will always love you, you freak of a bike
I think Julie will be OK, though. I rode her home and, though it wasn’t the same as that day I popped her cherry out of Carrefour, I felt even closer to her and her mismatched pedal cranks. “It adds character,” I purred to her, and indeed it does. And anyone who dares laugh at my bicycle will have to deal with the wrath of my feces. And the Force. But mostly the feces.
