The wheels go 'round and 'round

When I worked at my fathers bicycle shop as a mechanic there was one story we would hear consistently. Man or woman, old or young, all nationalities and income levels, the story of why your bike is creaking, groaning, screeching, broken, twisted, shredded, clicking, stuck or just plain not working always starts with the words “I was just riding along.” This phrase is so over used by those who neglect and torment their bicycles that it has become quite the joke at the shop. 90% of the time, after fixing the bike, a good mechanic can tell what caused the problem and it is almost always the rider’s fault. Through neglect, malice, or ignorance people do terrible things to their bicycles and after wrenching for many years I have vowed never to be one of them. I pay loving attention to the state of my bicycles; cars however, are a different story.
My abuse of cars is a matter of historical and public record. From the time I “stole” my car with Aarwenn while we both still only had permits and ran it in to a pole at a Starbucks only to lie to my parents about how it became scratched latter, to the more neglectful habit I have of never (and I do me not even once since I have owned it) washing the outside of my current vehicle. From the 2 cars I have run out of oil, seizing the engines and totaling both cars, to the fact that I am so used to driving a stick that I slam on the break while looking for the clutch in automatics. I am like the anti-car. I have no mercy and even worse, no sense. Since getting married I actually clean out the inside of my car on occasion and pester my husband to change the oil on a semi regular basis but this minor change in behavior hardly makes up for all the years of abuse. What does make up for it is this. Today, as I was driving back to the office from lunch, my car began to wail and screech at such a high pitch and intensity that dogs from other counties and perhaps other states were howling. That alone would not make up for my behavior but the noise did not start out small and quiet, it simply turned on at full force, accosting me with its embarrassing, attention grabbing, cacophony of sound and causing me to swerve as a looked for its source and become very red in the face as a realized it was my own car. But even that would not make a dent in the grievances against me. What humbles me to the core is that when I got back to the office I had to call my dad and say “Papa, I was just driving along . . .”