Rain n Tyres
What a teeth gritting week it has been for me.
No, no... everything is fine. Mom is stable, job is fine, girlfriend is fine, brother is fine... its just me.. I'm not fine... OK, maybe I am fine, but I still did a lot of teeth gritting this week, and its mainly caused by 2 wheels, and lots of water.
You see, I travel 30mins to work daily. As you might know, I use my gud'ol trusty bike (which is beginning to feel like a regular feature on my blog) to travel back and forth. Its an OK bike really. It brings me from A to B, it seldom breaks down, and running cost is low. The only thing it lacks is perhaps 2 more wheels, a roof, air conditioning, radio, boot, steering wheel and gear box.. but maybe thats expecting too much out of it.
Furthermore, being new at my work place, and having no official title or position, I consider myself a really expensive office-boy/secretary/dispatch/clerk. The only person lower level than me is the cleaner lady, who comes in 2 days once to tidy and clean. But even she bosses me around, having full authority to ask me to leave when she is vacuuming (which I meekly submit to).
So, I basically travel on gud'ol faithful a lot, running on various (silly) errants for my (delinquent) superior who joined the company barely 2 months earlier but enjoys acting like he knows what he's doing and bossing me around. Navigating under the hot sun smack in the middle of busy KL on a Tuesday afternoon brought new meaning to the words "Eat dust sucker!" Every time I come back from one of those errants, I would take a tissue and wipe my face, and the resulting colour on the tissue would be what I like to call 'off black', which is a lot like charcoal black, only a little white from the talcum I put on in a futile bid to stay clean and dry.
My dental torment (teeth gritting) started when the rain started coming, incidentally almost every morning and evening, right when I travel to and from office. As a motorcyclist, there are only 3 choices when the rain comes, all three of which I did make over the week.
The first is to find shelter, under a bridge, petrol kiosk etc and wait it out. The problem is, you (or rather I) will get stuck there for at least half an hour. Then, the roads are still wet, and cars passing by will whiz pass you, spraying you wet with their tyres.
The second choice is to take the bull by the horn and race through the rain. I tried that. I wouldn't recommend it. You get soaked wet all the way through, down into where the sun don't shine (which I will testify to), you put yourself in danger, and worst of all, hitting raindrops at 100km per hour hurts.. a lot. Unless you intend to ride with thick medieval armour, be prepared to be assaulted by a rain of bullets.... or bullets of rain whichever. Even if you are thick skinned, nothing compares to being bombarded consecutively by bullet size raindrops right at the nipple. My nipples never took such a beating before in my life. If you're into SM and those sort of 'pleasurable pains', hey, no need for the whip and cane, just go ride a bike under the rain.
The last option I came to was just to give up in defeat, resign to your fate, and accept the wet underwear and battered swollen nipples. So it was, that the next time those torrential downpours came my way, i resign to a steady slow pace, trying my best to protect my nipples and keeping my insides as try as possible while grudging the rain, gritting my teeth.
There is a saying that says that when it rains, it pours. In this case, it is both literal and metaphorical.
Just as I thought I hit rock bottom going under the rain, my rear tyre blows, and I go into violent swerves. I quickly slow down, thankful that no car decided to make me road kill, and pushed it under the bridge. I thought my luck had returned when a fellow motorcyclist said that he had the tools to repair my tyre. The catch was, his hand was injured, so I would have to change it, under his supervision. I had no experience changing a motor tyre, and I was in office attire, soaking wet. But since I had no choice, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. An hour later, with grease all over my hands and sleeves, a couple of bruises and lots of sweat, we tried inflating the tyre. But our good friend's pump was damaged, and unless I could blow it like a balloon, my tyre wasn't anywhere near inflating.
So an entire hour worth of getting my hands dirty, dismantling part of my bike under a dark and wet bridge (it was already 9pm) amounted to nothing. I got on my bike, sat as front as I could, and took the next 15 minutes or so traveling at 10km/hour to the nearest workshop (which I knew would be closed anyway). I left the bike there and I called for help, and my brother picked me up and brought me home.
Perhaps this is just a over dramatic account of a simple case of regular setbacks in riding a bike. But emotions run high when you are hungry, wet and tired, and miles away from home. All you want to do is go home and take a shower, but even that seemed too far a reach for me at the time. It felt as if God was telling me that I had to work for it, even if it is as simple as a shower and warm meal, it never comes easy. It was the curse put on Adam at the beginning of time
That was just Tuesday. Though that was the only time I suffered a punctured tyre, I have gotten wet everyday for the past 3 days. My sympathetic brother said "Maybe you should get an old car when you graduate." My father tried getting me to be reflective "Some day, you will look back and remember the hard times you went through," My mother and girlfriend offered their sympathies "So kesian, come let me make a drink for you,"
Hence, for the pass few days, I have thought of nothing but how nice it would be if I had a car. Coming home in the rain today, I imagined (fantasized really) about driving to and from work, listening to CDs, feeling the cool breeze of air conditioning and the engine roaring, and mostly, the wipers wiping the rain water off the windscreen outside the car.
But just as another car speeds by and splashes a generous amount of water on me, I snap back into reality, and I finally remember something I forgot.
Perhaps its time to buy a freaking raincoat!!
No, no... everything is fine. Mom is stable, job is fine, girlfriend is fine, brother is fine... its just me.. I'm not fine... OK, maybe I am fine, but I still did a lot of teeth gritting this week, and its mainly caused by 2 wheels, and lots of water.
You see, I travel 30mins to work daily. As you might know, I use my gud'ol trusty bike (which is beginning to feel like a regular feature on my blog) to travel back and forth. Its an OK bike really. It brings me from A to B, it seldom breaks down, and running cost is low. The only thing it lacks is perhaps 2 more wheels, a roof, air conditioning, radio, boot, steering wheel and gear box.. but maybe thats expecting too much out of it.
Furthermore, being new at my work place, and having no official title or position, I consider myself a really expensive office-boy/secretary/dispatch/clerk. The only person lower level than me is the cleaner lady, who comes in 2 days once to tidy and clean. But even she bosses me around, having full authority to ask me to leave when she is vacuuming (which I meekly submit to).
So, I basically travel on gud'ol faithful a lot, running on various (silly) errants for my (delinquent) superior who joined the company barely 2 months earlier but enjoys acting like he knows what he's doing and bossing me around. Navigating under the hot sun smack in the middle of busy KL on a Tuesday afternoon brought new meaning to the words "Eat dust sucker!" Every time I come back from one of those errants, I would take a tissue and wipe my face, and the resulting colour on the tissue would be what I like to call 'off black', which is a lot like charcoal black, only a little white from the talcum I put on in a futile bid to stay clean and dry.
My dental torment (teeth gritting) started when the rain started coming, incidentally almost every morning and evening, right when I travel to and from office. As a motorcyclist, there are only 3 choices when the rain comes, all three of which I did make over the week.
The first is to find shelter, under a bridge, petrol kiosk etc and wait it out. The problem is, you (or rather I) will get stuck there for at least half an hour. Then, the roads are still wet, and cars passing by will whiz pass you, spraying you wet with their tyres.
The second choice is to take the bull by the horn and race through the rain. I tried that. I wouldn't recommend it. You get soaked wet all the way through, down into where the sun don't shine (which I will testify to), you put yourself in danger, and worst of all, hitting raindrops at 100km per hour hurts.. a lot. Unless you intend to ride with thick medieval armour, be prepared to be assaulted by a rain of bullets.... or bullets of rain whichever. Even if you are thick skinned, nothing compares to being bombarded consecutively by bullet size raindrops right at the nipple. My nipples never took such a beating before in my life. If you're into SM and those sort of 'pleasurable pains', hey, no need for the whip and cane, just go ride a bike under the rain.
The last option I came to was just to give up in defeat, resign to your fate, and accept the wet underwear and battered swollen nipples. So it was, that the next time those torrential downpours came my way, i resign to a steady slow pace, trying my best to protect my nipples and keeping my insides as try as possible while grudging the rain, gritting my teeth.
There is a saying that says that when it rains, it pours. In this case, it is both literal and metaphorical.
Just as I thought I hit rock bottom going under the rain, my rear tyre blows, and I go into violent swerves. I quickly slow down, thankful that no car decided to make me road kill, and pushed it under the bridge. I thought my luck had returned when a fellow motorcyclist said that he had the tools to repair my tyre. The catch was, his hand was injured, so I would have to change it, under his supervision. I had no experience changing a motor tyre, and I was in office attire, soaking wet. But since I had no choice, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. An hour later, with grease all over my hands and sleeves, a couple of bruises and lots of sweat, we tried inflating the tyre. But our good friend's pump was damaged, and unless I could blow it like a balloon, my tyre wasn't anywhere near inflating.
So an entire hour worth of getting my hands dirty, dismantling part of my bike under a dark and wet bridge (it was already 9pm) amounted to nothing. I got on my bike, sat as front as I could, and took the next 15 minutes or so traveling at 10km/hour to the nearest workshop (which I knew would be closed anyway). I left the bike there and I called for help, and my brother picked me up and brought me home.
Perhaps this is just a over dramatic account of a simple case of regular setbacks in riding a bike. But emotions run high when you are hungry, wet and tired, and miles away from home. All you want to do is go home and take a shower, but even that seemed too far a reach for me at the time. It felt as if God was telling me that I had to work for it, even if it is as simple as a shower and warm meal, it never comes easy. It was the curse put on Adam at the beginning of time
"Cursed is the ground because of you, through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground......"
Genesis 3:17
That was just Tuesday. Though that was the only time I suffered a punctured tyre, I have gotten wet everyday for the past 3 days. My sympathetic brother said "Maybe you should get an old car when you graduate." My father tried getting me to be reflective "Some day, you will look back and remember the hard times you went through," My mother and girlfriend offered their sympathies "So kesian, come let me make a drink for you,"
Hence, for the pass few days, I have thought of nothing but how nice it would be if I had a car. Coming home in the rain today, I imagined (fantasized really) about driving to and from work, listening to CDs, feeling the cool breeze of air conditioning and the engine roaring, and mostly, the wipers wiping the rain water off the windscreen outside the car.
But just as another car speeds by and splashes a generous amount of water on me, I snap back into reality, and I finally remember something I forgot.
Perhaps its time to buy a freaking raincoat!!
posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 11:15 am
Comments: 0
