Breakdown

I was on my way to the last practice for the praise night, biking down Prince of Wales. I had biked down from Hunt Club, and I was just coming up on the Experimental Farm. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was in my shirt sleeves and my dress pants.

Literally with a song in my heart, I peddled away until... my foot locked. What's going on? The chain, stupid chain.

I pulled over on the side of the road. I tugged and tugged with one hand, hoping to spare the other hand from the motor oil I'd poured onto the chain this weekend. I tugged and tugged. I got my other hand in there... in the meantime, my tan pants began to have long dark grease streaks. Cyclist after cyclist passed by me, ignoring me despite my more than obvious distress. A woman walked by me - nervous - because broken down bikes tended to by strange men have a history of being a very dangerous thing in this city. I didn't say anything, knowing how any woman in this city would feel. But I did resent that nobody was helping me.

After twenty minutes of tugging on this chain, with no results and the time for the practice rapidly approaching, I fell on the chassis sobbing, begging God to help me - it sounds stupid I know, really. But it had already been a horrendous day.

So I got smarter. I started working the chain back and forth, around the bolt surface where it was caught, twisting it under and around. I worked it free, but by this time I was a black and greasy mess. But I was free. I grabbed handfuls of grass from beside the Experimental Farm fence and wiped as much of the grease off my hands as I could, then I wiped all the oil off the frame.

I cycled down to Dow's Lake, pulled over beside the water, and reached down into the seaweed, pulling up as much gritty weed and dirt as I could, and doing my best to clean my hands.

I got to the church on time. One of the other singers had had a bad day, and she said she came because this was her chance to make it a good day. I knew how she felt.

We sang our lungs out, giving up to God our thanks for a few minutes away from the weird curves life throws us.