Alamo Heights Bike Tosser

No idea, but I guess this is what someone else's lousy day looked like.

It's already a lousy day, not least because we're in the middle of a global pandemic. Happily the pandemic hasn't made a great deal of difference to me, thus facilitating my irritation by inconveniences of lesser consequence.

The Lulu website through which I self-publish all sorts of things has had an upgrade, meaning that it no longer works and keeps forgetting my password. All morning I listen to my wife verbally wrestling with fellow programmers over an internet connection, now that she works from home, at least a couple of whom seem to know less about coding a webpage than I do. One of them routinely sets aside his designated tasks so as to concentrate on removing accidentally placed double spaces from lines of programming code, despite that a double space makes no difference to what the likes of you or I will eventually see on our screens. On other days he dedicates himself to highlighting different parts of code in different colours, supposedly for future reference by somebody or other, and my wife ends up having to finish off the work he was actually supposed to be doing. I've a feeling that the Lulu upgrade may have been coded by persons such as this. It doesn't work and half of the regular features are missing, but it looks like the British Airways site, and apparently that's what we really wanted all along.

Additionally, it's hot and windy out, which is a weird combination, and my ingrowing toenail - which has been fine since I was about sixteen - is playing up.

Anyway, I head out on my bike. Today I'm going to cycle to Bike World over on Broadway before I hit the trail. I've had the same tyres for a year, and the back one is bald, having covered something like five-thousand miles. I've already tried to purchase replacement tyres from Bike World, but they only had an ostentatious racing tyre in my size; so I'm trying again, and this time I'll simply ask them to order the fuckers if they don't have anything in stock. I'm trying to avoid using Amazon. I'm trying to support local business.

It's half past eleven in the morning and Bike World doesn't open until twelve, at which point they will allow just four people in the store at any one time. I lock up my bike and cross the road to Bird's Bakery, looking to get something to eat and to use up some time.

I examine the menu on the table set up outside. A woman comes out to take my order.

'I'll take a chicken sandwich,' I tell her.

She takes my card and goes back inside, then returns a couple of minutes later. 'I just figured I should let you know before I swipe your card, it will take about a quarter of an hour.'

'Fifteen minutes?'

'Yes.'

I look at my watch. I look at Bike World across the road, still shut. By the time the sandwich is ready, the store will be open, thus negating the entire fucking point of my buying the sandwich.

'Okay,' I sigh. 'Never mind.'

I wander up the road to the meat market but it doesn't seem like the sort of place which is likely to sell anything snacky.

I return to Bike World, and to three others who have arrived to wait in my absence, a young couple and an Alamo Heights Bike Tosser, a middle aged man who looks as though he's no stranger to the golf course and who regards himself as a better standard of person. He stands there with his mountain bike. I walk in front of him, pointedly unlock my own bike, then wheel it around so that I am now stood behind him.

'Sir,' says the younger guy who is here with his girlfriend, 'you were before us.' He gestures for me to come to the front of the queue.

'It's okay,' I say. 'There are four of us, and I don't mind so long as I don't end up waiting outside once they open.'

We all stand there for another few minutes.

The door opens and a bike dude emerges. He sees myself and  Alamo Heights Bike Tosser stood with our bikes. 'If you guys need repairs, you'll have to go to the double doors around the back.'

'I just need tyres,' I say.

Alamo Heights Bike Tosser says something which suggests that he has indeed brought his bike in for repair.

We wheel our bikes around to the back of the building, to the double doors as instructed. Because I was at the end of the queue, I am now first to get to the double doors, so I knock.

After another moment, the door opens and another bike dude pops his head out. He looks at me. 'Okay, how can we help?'

I look to Alamo Heights Bike Tosser. 'Didn't you need your bike taken in to the shop? Maybe if you're just getting it taken in…'

This is me being polite, having - so it turns out - misread the guy's needs. It's already been established that I was here first, so I hardly need to rub it in his face.

'Yeah,' he says to the Bike World guy, 'I'm going to need tubes and tyres, plus a rack too,' and off he goes with a list of all the stuff he intends to purchase. It seems that he's replacing everything on his bike except the frame.

The double doors close as the Bike World guy goes inside with Alamo Heights Bike Tosser's bike and long, long list of requirements.

We stand there in silence for a minute or two.

'Hell of a way to run a business,' says Alamo Heights Bike Tosser as though we're all in this together.

I wait another minute.

'Fuck it,' I say, walking off with my bike. 'I'll come back some other time, maybe when there are a few less cunts who want to go in front of me because they're more fucking important than I am.'

I say it loud so as to ensure that he will hear, and I take pleasure in doing so. My objection is poorly constructed, I know, but hopefully conveys just how much I dislike the man.

I cycle home. I was going to head out onto the trail but it's too hot and I'm too pissed off.