Big Problems

Several months ago my bike broke.  It broke in the worst way ever.  A slow motion crash, caused by a girl who managed to counterdodge my maneuvers to avoiding hitting her FOUR TIMES, so that I was within inches of running straight into her, and the only way I could avoid running her over was to turn sharply enough to roll myself and the bike over.  I hate that story, because it's boring, and there's no real conflict.  A high speed crash, a massive pothole, getting hit by something, these would all be much better stories, but the truth of it is slow speed emergency maneuver.  

It took me several months to address my broken bike for two key reasons.  One: I thought I was going to have to buy a new bike wheel to fix the slightly bent one, and I thought it would cost a lot of money.  Two: I never used my bike that much anyway.  I was getting into the habit of using it, but about 9 days into that this girl stepped right into my path, then jumped where I turned, and well you know already know that story.  When my relatives visited over the winter my brother told me that I could probably just get the tire trued for twenty or forty dollars.  That was good news, and once the right combination of "Wish I could use my bike more" and "Heading that way anyway" came up, I looking into things.  The bike shop guy said sure, he'd true it up for $25.  Sweet.  I agreed to meet him back half an hour later.

Which was when he told me that he couldn't do it.  He had started to, the spokes got too tight on one side, and too loose on the other, and it was beyond repair.  He had, of course, already looked up the price of a new wheel.

The average bike wheel in that place was pricey.  Around $100 pricey.  I was planning on checking a few other spots, one's that I thought would be cheaper,  but then I got a key piece of information.  

The average wheel is going to cost around 100 dollars.  My wheel, a 29" heavy duty wheel made for a hybrid bike, was going to cost around 250 dollars, because that wheel is unusually large.  The wheel is unusually large because my bike is unusually large, and my bike is unusually large because I am unusually large.

So add bike repair to the list of things that is affected by the giant tax.