so, yesterday, i decided to finally fix the flat i've had on my motorbike for months. it's nice weather and i've really missed riding. i figured it'd take me an hour or two to get the back wheel off, to the shop, get it fixed, and return it back onto the bike. oh, how foolish i am sometimes.

first of all, it took me nearly a half-an-hour to remember the keycode to the garage. i typed in so many different combinations that when i got it right and the garage door finally opened, it made me jump. (don't worry, i've written it down now so if i do forget it again, i know where to go to refresh my memory.) once inside, i set about getting the wheel off. remove bolt A, loosen bolt B, remove axel, remove wheel. sounds easy, right? it was up until that last part. my bike is engineered specifically to be a fucking pain in the ass. without a fancy lift or an "assistant" (which my handy repair manual insists i should use), there just isn't an easy way to get the wheel past the final drive and the frame. i tried. for an hour. i tried lifting the bike up over the wheel. i tried squeezing it past various pinch points. i tried sliding it out to the left. i would get close and then some other problem would arise. i was greasy, i was dirty and i was pissed. finally, frustrated and probably not thinking very clearly, i decided to quickly lay the bike down and pull the wheel out. it worked but i spilled gas and broke the right-side mirror. whatever. it was out.

with a clear view of the tire, i found the cause of the flat: a screw. i'm pretty sure some suspicious fellows had set me up to run over it when i stopped by Cory's work one night. screws just don't go in quite so perfectly. or maybe they do and i'm just paranoid.

in any case, i took the wheel to the shop and waited for them to fix it. got my car washed, made some phone calls, forgot to eat lunch. went back and picked the thing up and asked the guy if i was going to have just as much fun putting it back on. "yup." and are there any tricks you know of that might make it easier? "nope." thanks. party on.

got the wheel back home and proceeded to try to reattach it. same pain, same agony. an hour later i managed to lay the bike over just a little and slide the wheel in. ta da! no problem. wee. now, i just need to slide the axel in, attach those bolts and the bike will be golden again. except ... ugh! this dumb axel won't go through the hole. go in the hole! it's your home! you want to go in your home, don'tcha! a good twenty minutes of trying and i finally managed to twist the sucker into place, bolt it down and get my bike off of the make-shift lift i'd assembled from cinderblocks and scraps of wood. rode it to the gas station, checked the tire pressure, and, finally, the chore was done. time to completion? five, mother-fucking hours. not including time spent remember the code to the garage.

of course, my day wasn't nearly as painful as my girl's. she had worked the night before until 7:00am, slept until two, and gone off to give her big presentation that she'd been working on for weeks. unfortunately, once she got there, the technology wouldn't cooperate and not only were her presentation visuals lost to the ether, her laptop died as well. the upside was that her coworkers and bosses all thought her presentation was excellent and that she showed extreme grace under pressure, which, given that she specializes in emergency medicine, only shows how well suited she is for her profession. after that, she went to another meeting and then back to work for another night shift. poor girl.