journal features

finally got my bike back

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2012.06.20

After $82 and five days, I'm finally on my bike again.

It's very welcome. I like bicycle shop people, they tend to be relaxed and we can always share a laugh at the state of the beater I'm riding. On the other hand they don't tend to be terribly organized and I lost count of how many people I dealt with in finding out the solution for my bike and when I'd see it back. I think it was eightish.

Also not wild about how a $28 estimate reversed, but it's a small price to pay for freedom from vehicular traffic. In this case it was the manual labour on rethreading the steering tube (hope I have that part name right) plus some new brake parts that added up.

Thanks to the confusing correspondence with the shop's many "wrenches" and customer service staff, I wasn't expecting to get my bike back today and found myself cycling home in my office wear in "feels like 42oC" weather.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton