I'm in Amsterdam, boondoggling away my last year of law school. So far, life has been full of boring-as-shit orientations that go on and on for hours about how I shouldn't buy bikes off junkies or pee on the sidewalk, etc. Do I know where my first class is? No. Do I know where I can buy Tamiflu when the swine flu hits Europe? No. So basically, all the orientations have been 10 hours of my life I'll never get back.
Anyway, onto today's events! Yesterday I found that as a result of a bike collision with a stupid pedestrian, my back tire went flat.
The progression of my conniption fit upon discovering the tire:
1) Frantic running to my RA's room.
2) Scaring the bejeezus out of him with "I have a big emergency, my fiets! my fiets is kaput!!"
3) RA rushing out in his pj's "What happened to it??"
4) My tire is flat!! What do I do?
5) RA giving me a really dirty look and telling me this happens all the time and to basically take it to the shop and stop bothering him.
So today I wandered up Spaarndammerstraat (why everything in Dutch 20 letters long, I don't know.) to the FietsPiraat--that's bike pirate to the rest of us--hoping it would take 15 minutes to repair. Hélas, this really does happen all the time and there were like 10 bikes ahead of me so I had to pick it up before they closed today. But 9 Euro later my bike is back, my bumblebee bell is in its rightful place, and my bike rolls smoother than before. Just in time for me to develop another bruise on my bum in the shape of my bike seat!
Talk soon, tschüss!
