the remains of the day

So yesterday two wonderful things happened. One: I got mail. Two: I got my bike fixed.

The downstairs neighbor just happens to be a total bike nerd, a mechanical engineer, and a pretty nice guy. He agreed to help, after I tried explaining in broken german about my broken bike. The chain had mysteriously frozen up on me while riding it home from the flea market, stopping the wheels from turning with the potential to have flung me over the handlebars if I had been going any faster. At any rate I was totally scared to ride it after that but had no idea what was wrong. Oliver and me (well really just Oliver while I stood watching and biting my nails) proceeded to dismantle part after part, finding at each step some wildly dangerous malady. "Oh!" he kept saying, "that's no good...that's very dangerous." I think he really just wanted to throw the bike in the dumpster. Then, however, after quizzically examining the bent and completely un-parallel gear shifter thingy (pictured) we decided, what the hell, it can't be fixed so let's just take it off. He looked at me and said, "you know, SOME people actually prefer to ride this way and actually fix the one gear to the back wheel so that...." all I could do was smile and say, "you know, I HAVE heard of that." There was hardly a piece of that bike left untouched a couple hours later and now I think it should be good to ride. Oliver even said he'd buy it off me when I go home.

Today it rained hard though, so I haven't really even gotten to ride it yet.

I'm bummed I won't be able to make it to the Neko Case concert. man. everything cool happens in Hamburg.