Monday, May 17, 2010

Vicious cyclist

Unbelievable.

I had my quarterly appointment today to get my meds prescriptions re-upped. After school, I rode my bike the 20 minutes to Yangjae subway station and left it chained to the railing outside McDonald's. I figured in such a public place, with hundreds of people walking by, it would be perfectly safe.

I took the subway to St. Mary's Hospital, got the prescriptions and had them filled, and took the subway back. When I got back to my bike... the seat was missing! Some lovely citizen had stolen the saddle, the post, and the taillight attached to the post.

I just stood there, blinking, for awhile, not quite registering what I was seeing. (What's wrong with this picture?) Why in the heck would anybody want my bike seat?

After awhile I stopped standing that scratching my head like Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel and saying "Oy, doy..." and figured, however annoying it was, I could walk the bike ten minutes to the bike shop and get a new seat. But the bike shop had to order a new saddle; it's going to take two days and the whole setup will cost half of what I spent for the entire bike a couple of weeks ago. So I had to walk the bike another twenty minutes and leave it on the balcony of my classroom... and I forgot to unstrap my meds from my 85 percent of a bike and take them home because, well, you know... oy doy.

One of our students, a very nice kid named Josh, told me that I shouldn't leave the little headlight on the handlebars because somebody would take it. Shows what he knows; I've still got that.

Meanwhile, proving that there is no justice in this world, the infernal bikes that incessantly play the Pac-Man theme are still working, still blasting away at my sanity.

I wonder if the seats come off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The EXACT same thing happened to Tris' bike when it was chained up in the garage beneath our apartment. Koreans are a strange, strange people.