Well, the final nail in the coffin of last week was not bike-related, it was car-related. Some crackhead got into our garage, busted out my driver’s-side window, and took my iPod. They also took the charger/FM tuner that I used to listen to the iPod, and an old Sony Discman and tape adapter that I had the glovebox. Not a very good haul when you consider the following:

• The iPod was engraved with “To Andrew Turley, from your friends.” Something tells me that’s going to drop the resale value.
• The iPod was pretty beat up. There’s this obsession that people have with keeping  iPods in pristine condition. If the buttons work and I can read the display, I’m happy.
• You can buy a NEW portable CD player for something like $20. Who the hell is going to give you any money for a used one?

I spent 30 minutes cleaning out the glass from the interior and the parking space, 2.5 hours and $190 getting the window replaced, and I’m out about $350 if I want a new iPod and tuner. Mr. Crackhead is probably up $60 at most. Doing the math, that leaves us (the crackhead and me) with a net loss of (190+350)-60=$480. Looking at numbers like that, I’m ready to just start hand out $20 bills to the neighborhood crackheads and begging them to not break into my car. Actually, what I should do is try to start helping out at CATS (Community Awareness and Treatment Services), just a few blocks from my house. They probably need volunteers and donations. I have to imagine that would be more productive than revenge fantasies.

I wondered what the bike gods had in mind. Now I see their diabolical plan. Rain.

Let me start by saying that I don’t mind riding in the rain on the proper bike. In my case, the proper bike is my fixed gear. What makes it the proper bike? Fenders. Fenders are the difference between riding along enjoying the sigh of a wet world, and riding along with dirty water pouring down your legs and into your shoes. Unfortunately, my fixed gear is at home with a flat tire. Today I’m on my touring bike, which lacks fenders. (And yes, I know, any respectable touring bike has fenders. Mistakes were made.)

So, do I tough it out and hope the rain isn’t too bad? Do I go over to Mike’s at lunch and pick up some fenders and put them on before I ride home? Do I completely chicken out and take the Caltrain all the way to San Francisco? There just aren’t a lot of good options. Oh yeah, and it’s supposed to continue to rain tomorrow, so I also need to figure out what I’m going to do about that.

I’ve done something to make the bike gods very angry.

• Monday: I biked to work from San Francisco down to Palo Alto. About seven miles from work I tried to clip in to my pedal after a stop light, and my cleat wouldn’t catch. I rode for about a block and a half trying to get it in, and finally pulled over. It turns out the spring holds the blades of the pedal in place had broken. I rode the rest of the way with a more or less useless pedal.
• Tuesday: I took the fixed gear to work. Riding home on Market Street I notice a low rumble and some bumpiness and a wobble in the bike. I pull over and sure enough I have a flat tire. I was only a few blocks from home, so I just walked. It was windy and cold, and it sucked. I still haven’t figured out what happened, but the tires are pretty old, and when I looked at them without any air in them it became pretty obvious that they need to be replaced.
• Wednesday: I replaced the pedal on the Trek thinking, “It’s a good thing I have a backup bike.” At work, just after lunch, I looked at my bike and noticed that I HAD ANOTHER FLAT. It turned out to be a big staple through the tire. It didn’t take too long to fix, but it was annoying.

Let’s see what today has in store.