Friday the 28th
Last Friday, I experienced one of the most unlucky and brainless evenings of my entire life. Never before have I not used my brain to such a magnitude and then experienced severe bad luck at the same time. I wouldn’t consider myself an unlucky person. Unfortunately, Karma got wind of this and paid me my dues big time. Here’s my story.
We have new recruits at work. Eighteen in total and all of them needed inducting into the business. So, three hours after having left work, I returned to do just that. It was 17h30. I was meant to be there fifteen minutes earlier, but the buses weren’t running to schedule and I had to wait in the rain for 20 minutes until one arrived. Before I could start training the new guys, there were a few admin errands that needed to be sorted. I work in a secure office which is always locked. I had forgotten to bring my keys, so I had to borrow some from the manager. I let myself in and started to do a bit of paperwork. Half way through, I realised there was something outside the office that I needed. Now, there’s a trick with the door to the office that allows you to keep it ajar temporarily. The door itself has expanded slightly (since it’s made of wood) so if you shut the door slowly, it rubs against the frame and stay open. I wasn’t wearing my work trousers, so I hadn’t clipped the office keys onto my belt as I would normally. I exercised the door trick so I could quickly pop out to retrieve what I needed, stupidly leaving the keys on my desk. For the first time ever, the door trick failed on me and the door slammed shut. I was locked out. The only set of keys on the property were locked in. Brilliant!
Feeling stupid, I told my manager and offered to kick the door in. He didn’t seem to like that idea and said he’d call the supervisor in, who also has a set of keys. I didn’t like that idea since the very reason I was back at work was so that the unwell supervisor could go home early. We pondered our options and examined the door for weaknesses, but it seemed we would definitely need another set of keys. Then, the manager had a brainwave. He had spotted a bike belonging to another staff member. He suggested I ride the bike back to my house to fetch my set of keys. After a few moments thought, I put my coat on, and set off into the driving rain. It was only 4 miles or so there and back and it’d only take me half an hour. Problem solved!
The rain wasn’t heavy, but there was a fresh head-on wind blowing, so it wasn’t very pleasant. Still, I felt good about toiling away at the pedals. I felt the physical effort was a way of redeeming myself. Upon reaching the theatre, I was half way. Suddenly, there was a crunch from beneath me. The crunching continued and turned into a metallic grinding. For a moment, I thought the bike was disintegrating underneath me. It didn’t. I stayed upright. What actually happened was that peddling suddenly became very easy. I looked down and spotted the bike’s gear system dragging along the floor. I came to a stop (the brakes were still excellent) and inspected the damage. The chain was gone. I looked down the road but couldn’t see it. The entire gear system had completely sheered off of the bike’s frame. I was stranded, equidistance between work and home in pouring rain. Awesome! It was another moment to weigh up my options. It didn’t take long. I didn’t have any. My first instinct was to call someone to help me out, but obviously, I didn’t have my mobile with me. Obviously, I had left that at work so I could cycle a little more freely. I started to trudge home.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived home, dripping wet and with a great story to tell. I dumped the bike and convinced my sister to give me a lift back to work. She kindly agreed and we laughed all the way back. She dropped me off as close as she could get and I ran the rest of the way. Upon arriving, the main doors to the building were locked and there was no one there to let me in. The ten minutes I had to wait until someone came up weren’t that much of a problem, certainly not in comparison to the horror that I experienced next.
Just as I was let in, I remembered why I had gone home in the first place. It was to get my set of keys. My keys WERE STILL AT HOME! Unbelievably, I had forgotten to pick them up before coming back with my sister! I had pushed a disabled bike in the rain for a mile FOR NOTHING! If I felt stupid before, I felt braindead now. I was genuinely worried for my own sanity. What was going on? Why was this happening to me? How can anyone be this stupid?
I went back to the offices. The manager asked if everything went OK? The look on my face answered that question for him. He spotted I no longer had the bike with me. He asked where the bike was. I told him the bike had fallen apart and so had my mind. I just wanted to curl up and make it all go away.
After we had gone through all the paperwork with the new employees, we returned to the problem at hand. The boss finally agreed to allow me to kick the door in. I tried three times, but failed. Our only remaining option was for the manager to give me a lift back in his BMW to my house to get my keys and for us then to drive back again. It has to be said, he remained very supportive and light hearted about the whole experience. If he was angry and felt inconvenienced, he didn’t show it.
You probably think that I feel embarrassed about this little episode. I don’t really. I’m more bemused and intrigued. I don’t really understand why and how I could have been so dumb. At the time, I was seriously worried about my health. Now though, it’s happened and there’s not much I can do about it other than move and learn from it, so that nothing like it happens again.
Incidentally, having checked the bike, it would seem there was little, to no lubrication in the gear mechanism, so that wasn’t definitely not my fault. That was just bad luck.
