Makes You Stronger . . . .

So getting back to part two of the story of my week in hell. When I left you last, I was headed home from RI and an incredible day of kayak surfing with my friends. So anyway, I get with a few miles of my exit off of I-93 and all of a sudden, the RPMs on my car start jacking up to 5K or more with the car in cruise control. I figure the CC is going on the fritz, so I disengage it and try to give the vehicle gas on my own. The RPMs continue to jack up and now the car will not engage the transmission. Knowing full well that this has now gone from a possible cruise control issue to a blown clutch, I start to get over to the breakdown lane before I loose all my momentum and get stuck in the middle of traffic. So I get into the breakdown lane, give my girl and AAA a call and wait for the tow truck. I had stopped within a few hundred yards of my exit, Grrr.

As I am waiting for the tow truck and my girl to arrive, I begin to think about how we are going to get all my gear home. I had two kayaks on top of my car, which is equipped with a rack system (my girl's car is not), all my fishing gear, two kayak paddles and a bin of paddling gear as well. After about ten minutes, the tow truck shows up but no girl. As the guy from AAA is working to get my Subi Baja secured for the tow to the dealership (kayaks and all still on top of the car), I get a call from my girl asking, "Where are you exactly?" Apparently, she did not realize I was still on the highway and thus missed the on ramp to come and meet me. So she had to take a fairly large detour and arrived just as the Baja was secured onto the tow truck. Luckily (if such a things exists at this point in the night), my mechanic is only about 5 miles away. So we head in the direction with the tow truck in pursuit, get there, wait for the AAA guy to unload the car and then begin transferring gear from my car to my girl's. Since she only has a flimsy factory rack on her car (a Subi Forester), we decide that we will need to take one boat and some gear back to our house (about 15 minutes away), then come back for the second boat and the rest of the gear. By the time the second trip was completed and the boats were put away, it was 2:00 am in the morning and we both needed to get up early for work, even more so now that I do not have a car and would need to find an alternate means of transportation to work in a few hours.

We get up at 6:30 in the morning after a tumultuous 4 1/2 hours of sleep. It is raining outside (as it has been regularly here in Boston for almost a month). I decide that I am going to ride my bike to work. Now I usually don't ride in the rain, as navigating Boston traffic on a bike is difficult enough without the added challenges of wet pavement and impaired driver visibility. However, I thought to myself "Suck it up you puss. It's not that big of a deal." So I get geared up and ready for the ride to work, which is about 13 miles one way, and give my mechanic a call at 7:00 am to let him know about what happened to the car.

Now it is important to know two things at this point: 1) I had my clutch replaced a little over a year ago at just under 80,000 miles & 2) I don't have a ton of spare money at this point. Even though both my girl and I are currently working, she was laid off earlier this year and like many others during the recent economic turndown, we have had to really work hard to keep our heads above water. Since my girl was rehired in April, I have been squirreling away any money that I can in preparation for the Chicago LAN and another trip that we have planned to see her parents in Wisconsin later in August. I knew that if I had to pony up the money for a new clutch, both these trips would be in serious jeopardy. So I took this knowledge into my conversations with my mechanic, prefacing our discussion with my belief that the clutch they installed last year was faulty and should not have burnt out in such a short time. He came back with questions like "Has someone else been driving your car" (NO), have you been hauling heavy loads (No) and my favorite, "Have you been racing the car? (A Baja? Really?). Bottom Line was they would look at the clutch and let me know if it was faulty (yeah right), but chances are I would be looking at $1500 to repair my car. There goes my trip to AwesomeTown.

So having lost the first of several battles with my mechanic over the cost of the repair, I set out to bike to work. The rain had let up a bit, so I was traveling through more of a misting that a downpour, which I thought was a small blessing. Little did I know that such blessings are short-lived. About halfway through my ride I start to think, "This isn't so bad" and told myself to suck it up, HTFU, and get my ass to work. I definitely needed the exercise, having discontinued my gym membership to save some $. So I pedaled on. I get to within about a half a mile from work when it happened.

I was coming up to a stoplight that was green, but turned yellow a bit quicker that I expected. Thinking that I did not want to challenge any cars in the intersection with the rain, I pumped my brakes to stop and wait it out. Without warning, my front wheel slid sideways 90 degrees on the wet pavement and I began to go down. As only happens in times of impending doom or imminent personal injury, time slowed down and everything happened as if I was watching myself in a movie. My bike went down and I slid on my back for about 20 feet, right up to the edge, but not into, the intersection. As I was doing my version of a Moto GP crash down Brookline Avenue in Boston, I was particularly intrigued by the looks of shock and horror on the faces of the drivers who were stopped in the lane next to me as they watched me slip and slide towards my death by speed bump that was awaiting me if I continued into the intersection and oncoming traffic. The old lady in the Cadillac seemed particularly concerned if the wide-eyed gasp she was emitting was any indication of her state of mind. I came to a stop just at the edge of the intersection and time zipped back into "standard mode" with a snap.

Like a turtle that has been flipped on its back by a curious dog or maniacal child, I looked up and around to get my bearings and slowly got to my feet. Several of the drivers behind me and in the lanes next to me slowly came to their senses and began to ask me if I was ok. After some quick triage, I ascertained that I indeed was banged up and bruised, but apparently not broken. As I pulled my bike over to the side of the street to make sure that it was still rideable, the kindly old woman in the Cadi pointed out that several pieces of my gear, including my seat pack and one of my panniers, we still lying in the road like some impromtu yard sale. I thanked her, picked up my gear, snapped my neck in both directions, popped my rear fender back in place and continued on to work. It seems that my hydration pack had protected me from the brunt of the impact and road friction from the slide. All things considered, I knew I was very lucky, but did not really feel as such at that moment.

At work, I had to recount the incident at least a dozen times as I covered the worst of the road rash with bandages and got ready for the day. We have showers at work, so I cleaned up, did a little basic first aid, dropped my bike off at our shop to have it looked at (I work for an outdoor retailer) and got to my desk. I debated calling my girl to tell her what happened, but decided against it. After my first and only other accident biking to work a little over a year ago, she did her best to convince me never to ride to work again. I figured it was best to get home and let her see that I was really ok before telling her the tale of my slip & slide down Brookline Ave. So I "started" my day and got down to business.

As the day went on I had several conversations with my mechanic, going back and forth on who should pay for my new clutch and how much it was going to cost. Of course, he found additional work that "really needed to be done as soon as possible" like a faulty O2 sensor and axle boots that needed to be replaced. The car does have over 100,000 miles on it, so these types of repairs were on my radar, but added to the clutch, the cost was rapidly climbing to over $2500. I saw not only my savings and my trip to Chi-Town slipping through my fingers, but also my next couple of paychecks along with them. I told him to fix the clutch and the O2 sensor and to put the rest on hold for now. I argued with him for a discount and got a whopping $200 off of the bill. What a saint this guy is. I told him that I would not be able to pick up the car until Friday as that was when my next paycheck came through and went about my day.

When the day finally ended, I discovered that my bike was ok and rideable, but that the rain had intensified. Not having the gumption to do any more another pavement break dancing just yet, I called my girl, filled her in on my day and asked her to pick me up at the train station. By the time I made it home, I was incredibly sore all over and mentally beat to hell. I lay down on the bed around 8:00 pm and slept clear through the next morning. Wednesday was here and hopefully the worst of the week was finally behind me. However, ill fate would say "Not so fast brother" one more time to me before it was finished with me.

Stay tuned for part III of this tale - "Unless it actually does kill you first", coming to you tomorrow.