Succor

No riveting race reports or road rage to report here, just a little hum-diddly from 'round home...

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Last last weekend, I needed a lock. Thinking I had one, I dug around in the drawers through all the Presta valve nuts and indeed uncovered my old combination lock on my old bike cable.

I've had the black lock a long time. I'm pretty sure my mom bought me two locks for my locker when I started high school (which in BC was grades 8-12; we don't speak freshman-soph-junior-senior up north), the blue lock and the black lock. By the end of high school, the blue one didn't work so well: if it was pushed closed and you didn't turn the dial, you could just pull it back open again. Actually, I think you could turn the dial a fair amount and still just pull it back open. Still, I mostly used the blue lock in my last year of high school due to the convenience of not really having to lock it, and neither was anything stolen nor was my locker booby-trapped--hm, it's making me think I might've had some measure of respect. Occasionally a friend would flip through my notes to get their homework done, but no harm.

Anyway, the blue lock died, but the black lock lives on, and still works just fine. Which is to say, I can't just pull on it to open it: one actually needs to remember the combination.


Oh.

I tried. I turned, and turned back, and tried to feel tumblers clicking into place, and racked my brain for inspiration. After a good half-hour, I decided it was no good, and walked to the corner store to get a new lock. It wasn't much money, but I was regretting that not only was the old lock wasted because I couldn't remember the combination, but it was going to take the bike cable with it unless/until I scrounged a bolt cutter from somewhere.

Later that evening, I got the old black lock out again and tried some more. Ah, inspiration! I could feel the numbers floating in front of me, see them, and tried again and again, but no luck. I threw it back in the drawer and went to double-check the combination for the new lock--ah, the exact numbers I thought would've opened the old lock. Argh. I tossed it back in the closet and turned away to face the workweek.

Now the following weekend, this just-past weekend, was absuh-puh-lutely gorgeous. I spent a lot of Saturday in my office trying to sort out a presentation--didn't get very far--but at least my office has windows so I could see the sunshine. I got out for a long bike ride Sunday morning, a far better way to use the weather, and didn't expect myself to have any good work thoughts afterwards, just a real breather of an afternoon. After getting back, eating, and showering, I played around with Slow in the back a bit, got the basket back on the front, and sat down on the stoop to take a long look.


I've been uncertain of Slow's future, as my bike stable is getting largish and I don't know when Slow would get ridden. There's no space for Slow inside, meaning a parking spot outside under a tree to get covered pitch and to be rained on or to be baked in the sun, leading to general deterioration. I could sell Slow, but the paint is old and dull and mechanically things are and will always be, uh, idiosyncratic. I could give Slow away to Goodwill or the like, but you just don't give things to Goodwill that are close to being trash--or idiosyncratic (tires not available in stores, non-standard bolts, questionable shifting, and is that brake rubbing?). Or I could put Slow on the sidewalk with a "Free" sign, destining the wheels to be tacoed and the frame to be bent by hooligans outside some dive bar.

I didn't like my options, but I was liking sitting on the stoop. It faces north, so there's no worry about the sun shining in my eyes under the blue, blue sky. The grass is growing, the back-back yard is full of lush 2-ft high weeds, the birds were singing, and I could watch a crow bringing bits of grass and branches to build a nest in a neighbour's pine tree. There was a cool breeze and just the lightest hum from traffic. I could've sat there for hours. I did sit there for an hour. It was an hour well spent.

Then, the lock came back to mind, so I got it back out and sat back down on my stoop. Tried remembering the combination. xx-xx-xx? Nope, that's the new lock's combination again...12-36-4? Nope, that was the blue lock's combination. How odd that after all this time I can remember the blue lock's combination, which was really never used. Still, we all remember old, odd numbers, right? Parents' phone number is easy, as is parents' old mailing address. High school student number 88292, university student number 50198944, grad school student number 4620167. I know the numerical order of the alphabet by heart: K? 11. V? 22. O? 15. C'mon, try me.

The lock--there was a pattern.


Oh. Now we're getting somewhere. Flash back twenty years to me sitting on the couch downstairs and Mom handing me the locks and me comparing their combinations. The black lock's combination had a pattern, one that made me think at the time "gee, this will make it easy to remember." Not easy enough...

The blue lock's combination was low-high-low. New lock is high-low-high. Are you getting the new lock and the black lock confused because they're both high-low-high?

Try variations: 26-4-31, 28-12-34, 34-2-27...spinning a forgotten lock on a Sunday afternoon 'cuz there's nothing else I want or need to do. High-low-high isn't getting me anywhere.

There was a pattern.

The combination numbers all ended with the same digit.

Click.


Darn it if that didn't just make my day. And I sat on the stoop and unthreaded the lock from the bike cable and closed the lock, and opened it again, and closed it, and opened it again, and put it back on the bike cable and closed them together again.

And then I got my shoes on and got my helmet and got the bike cable and the lock and got on Slow and we went to the store. And my legs were tired from riding for hours that morning, but that was just fine 'cuz Slow doesn't hurry well. We rode to Trader Joe's, not because I really wanted or needed anything from TJ's, just because I hadn't been there in a while, and I locked Slow to the railing with the bike cable and the lock. I came out with the groceries and they fit into the basket perfectly, and we came home.

Slow is going to stay. I'll never have another bike like him. And now he even has his own lock.