Mein Fahrrad

It's already the 19th of October, I don't know where the time is going, but it's slipping away, I know I always say that. I bought a bicycle about 2 weeks ago, the cheapest they have, but I like it, since I now live relatively central, still 10 km or so from my work and other places I usually hang out, but there's more around here than at the old place. It's nice to ride around, you get a different view of the city, as opposed to whipping around in a tube underground. But it's kind of slow, partly because my bike is the kind your grandmother would ride (yours, not mine), so I'm a bit scared to push it to the edge in case it explodes or something. Also I'm scared of Tokyo traffic, it's unfamiliar to me, and if they drive like they walk, drifting from side to side, unaware that another person is coming straight towards them and they are blocking the left side of the path, then I think it could be dangerous. I could be run over by some wanker in a hummer who is too busy watching a dvd on the built in player. This truly is a pointless rant today, more something to do while I wake up. My hummers have a more important role to play in Japan, as I feel they counter balance other inadequacies men may feel in life. There's a bike outside my work, I think someone has abandoned it, which makes me sad, as it looks pretty cool, better than mine. The deterioration process has already begun, first it gets the pink label stuck to it, which indicates it's illegally parked, then pieces slowly begin to disappear from it, so far the seat is gone, next I guess it's the wheels, then all other bits until eventually it's just a frame locked to a pole. It's funny how you don't see this kind of thing in Australia, as very few people ride bikes, this being due to the idea that you ride a bike because you are either too poor for a car, drunk, have lost your licence, or are one of those environmental hippy fags. Real men drive V8's. Then again people tend not to park their bike and just abandon it, or maybe whoever owns this bike forgot where they parked it. Might've been a student, maybe I taught them, after the lesson they could've suffered a major cranial meltdown, or an overdose of stimulation, and just wandered off into the night, maybe they're still wandering around in some kind of trance like state. But it would've been good if people abandoned bikes in Sydney, like in Oslo, it was always a cheap way to get replacement parts, and a bit more exciting. Riding around looking for a bike with the part that you needed. But there were rules too, the bike had to have been there for a while, we'd often keep checking a bike, until we felt it'd been there long enough to become fair game. Also it had to already have 25% or so of it's parts missing. Is it stealing? Or removing garbage? This is what happens when you start typing with nothing clear to say. And finally, for the sake of nostalgia, one night in Oslo, in the summer, I'd been at Øyafestival, and was on my way to a party, somehow I ended up hanging around Beate, some mad woman who I knew through friends, she was complaining that no one had waited for her, so I said I'd give her a double to town, which wasn't more than 10 minutes walk. The street was kind of crowded with people heading from the festival, so we couldn't ride so fast. My front wheel had a slight buckle from an attempt to ride down some stairs a week or so prior which resulted in me lying tangled in my bike at the bottom, with all these people running to help me, even though I was fine, I just couldn't untangle myself from the bike, I was more annoyed at the scene they were creating and the buckle I'd made in my front wheel. So we were riding along slowly, and our combined weight, plus the extra stress put on the buckle by the slow speed caused it suddenly to collapse. It was a very smooth collapse, like closing a large encyclopedia, even and slow, it just kind of folded up. But there was no more riding and I had to get to a party across town. What to do? Of course I began searching for a replacement wheel, but as I was desperate, I wasn't concerned about what kind of wheel or were it came from. Finally I found an innocent bike with a clip-on wheel, and quickly took it off and put it on my bike, then rode to the party. But I'm not purely malevolent, I only planned to stay at the party for an hour or so, then to return and put the wheel back in it's place. But of course I woke up at four o'clock on the lounge, surrounded by some Swedish strangers, and red wine spilt all over my new T-shirt, luckily it wasn't too far from my house so I got up and went home. The next day we got up early and went out on the fjord in the Johnsen's trusty boat, and I was still in possession of the "borrowed" wheel. By the evening we had returned and I was starting to feel bad about the wheel, so later in the evening I rode back down to Torggata, and the wheelless bike was still waiting there, in the darkness I put the wheel back and dragged my own bike home. Maybe it was a boring story, but I wonder still if the owner returned on Saturday night, only to scream "Mother fucker stole my wheel!", then came back on Sunday night to scream "Mother fucker returned my wheel!", Maybe he'd been out to buy a new one, at least he has a spare now. Or is he oblivious to the service he had lent me? Is he even a he? Maybe it was a girl. Yes.