Two Things

There are two things in this world that I absolutely hate with the fiery passion of a thousand rabid beavers in a wicker furniture store: Bikes and Spiders. I’ve already explained to you my deep seeded hatred of spiders which mostly derives from the fact that nothing natural has EIGHT LEGS AND EYES with which to build terrifying sticky traps of stangulatory death. (Spell check says strangulatory isn’t word. I disagree). So on that particular note I won’t go into much detail.

Bikes, however, allow me to explain. I have a long history with bikes. For a good portion of my life I happily avoided them until one quarter at school where I had no choice but to take back-to-back classes that just happened to be on exact opposite ends of the campus.

No problem! I thought riding a bike would be fun. Hey, I’d get, you know, exercise and fresh air and all that. That is until the very first day I’m riding my new bike.

Here I am, happily peddling through the street when I come up to a street with no sidewalk. The bike lane here is one of those where it’s between the right hand turn lane and the lane next to it, and about 300 feet of what I call the Passage Of Peril where you have to transition from being as far to the right as possible to being in between two lanes of traffic. Which means you have to navigate through cars.

Of course, as I’m navigating the Passage of Peril on my first day ever of riding my new bike -- happily peddling along, mind you -- I hear this tiny little clink of a noise and very quickly notice that even though I’m peddling my sweaty, fun-sized butt off, I’m actually losing speed. Not just losing speed, I’m coming to a stop, and I’m grinding and grinding those peddles to no avail.

Cars are flying past me and careening on to the freeway on ramp! Fratholes are honking at me! Spoiled brats in convertibles are leaning out their windows and haggling me, that stupid kid on the bike who doesn’t know how bikes work even though the chain connecting all the gears has been left behind and now MY BREAKS AREN’T WORKING and I’m forced as soon as I come to a teetering halt in the middle of the intersection to walk my stupid brand new first-time-ridden bike back to campus in the middle of the scorching hot May Riverside sun.

Eventually that bike was “stolen” and whoever “stole” it completely destroyed the frame making it completely unridable.

What. A. Shame.

So I don’t like bikes. I also don’t like spiders. So low and behold when I first get to my apartment with my new supervisor he’s like “Hey check out this bike that you can ride around town! It’ll get you places and it’s awesome and you won’t have to walk since everything is so far away!” Of course the bike is COVERED in spider webs and huge green spiders that are just aching for a chance to jump onto my face and kill me.

But I decide to suck it up. I grab a broom (which involved another terrifying battle that almost resulted in my arm getting amputated due to spider venom) and head over to the bike to clear off the spiders webs. And it’s as I’m doing this that I realize that I’m actually saving this bike (Side note: I’ve already decided that ALL bikes are spawns of the devil and should return straight to hell) from being covered in terrifying spiders. No, I should leave the bike to the spiders. If the spiders and bike want to be friends, that’s fine and frankly I’m not interested in their affairs as long as they keep the inevitable post-honey-moon-phase arguments low enough so I can’t hear them over my Coldplay album.

If I get a knock on my door and through the peep hole I see a sobbing, battered bike who just needs to vent about how awfully he’s been treated, I’ll tell him through the door to call the police and I’ll go back to my own business.

So I head back the spider covered shed, battle the bastards once again to put the broom back, and decide that, quite frankly, I can walk to the god damn store just fine. No bikes or spiders involved.