So, as I recall, it was the first Friday of the program in earnest, and I had already started panicking over the schedule. You see, apparently, having bad navigational skills is a CP thing, and I hate getting lost in foreign countries. As is the constant adventure of travel, there is a saying as part of a poster I have on my wall now that says “Travel often; getting lost will help you find yourself.” Oh, if only I could appreciate that at the time! But alas, I was more worried about being on time, as I was never raised to run on my own time. If I had to be there, it meant getting up 2 hours early so I could be there. And if I had been planning the schedule, I wouldn't have chosen to leave at 7 AM, but, c'est la vie!
As it was, I didn't have my precious Beastmobile, so I needed assistance for locomotion from my lovely friend and travel companion, and I was less than happy about it. We had decided to try to go a different way to make the walk to the bus stop faster, knowing there was a two-hour commute on the other end. We were making good time and I was getting excited. As some of you may know, London is famous for its old and notoriously uneven cobblestone sidewalks. This sets the preface to our story. We were rolling along, talking about what we were going to do for the day, as we would be out exploring zone 1 (central London, West End) for the entire day. I heard a strange noise which I assumed to be a rock, or a break or something. I vaguely notice this long metal thing on the ground, but it's not mine, so we proceed as usual. About 10 minutes later, we are going over a bump in the sidewalk, and instead of tipping backward like it was asked to, my chair tips forward as the wheel axle catches the bricks and my friend and I exchange a few choice words with anyone who happened to be listening at that moment. I had my arm extended onto the sidewalk to make sure that it wasn't my head this time. It took a few seconds to realize how could that even happen? And then it came to us....
I had no front wheel!
As it turns out, the place where I hit the bricks was actually the axle of where my front wheel was supposed to be. So, after that we spent about 20 minutes marveling at how I could not notice. As we retraced our steps (rolls?), we found my wheel and the long screw that went through the axle cane, covered in hair. Evidently, this was the noise I had heard when something fell. However, we were missing the bolt that went on the other side to hold this screw in place. So here we were, sitting on the pavement in the middle of a flyover next to the 24-hour McDonald's trying to find this thing. So much for the schedule, karma had come back to, well, bite me. After about 5 or 10 minutes, this guy on a bicycle asks if he can help. He says there is a construction site up the way and he rides over there to see if he can find a replacement for the missing bolt. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to use my Nokia phone from 1980 to call the professor and tell him we are going to be late, while I didn't even memorize my own phone number yet. “Oh, right then, I expect you'll want to get that mended straight away, yeah?” he says. But we had absolutely no idea where to go. We were stuck pretty much as far away from the central city as you could get. The chap who helped us recommended a cycle surgery shop in the East End, but we decided to hop a bus and get as close as we could to where we were going. Clutching my wheel in hand with my friend standing right in front of me to make sure this does not happen again, people stared at us more than they usually did that morning.
As luck would have it, we were, ironically, the first ones to arrive outside Westminster station. the professor thought I had already found a replacement, and was taken aback to see the still collecting spare parts upon my arrival. He informed us that there was, indeed, another cycle surgery shop about 5 minutes from there, and my friend was able to get the boltand they put it in for me free of charge. For the record, I would never get wheelchair service like that here in America, much less from a nonspecialized vendor. And with that, we were once again on our merry way!
Until next time!
(a huge thank you to Peter Buckroyd for being a wonderful and helpful human being! We all still miss you! Cheers!)
(Many thanks to my friend Sherry for the group photo! Image: Agroup of college students standing together in front of a beautiful iron fence. We are all smiling. I am seated in my chair in front. Big Ben is clearly visible on the viewer's left in the background.)
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