Which in turn led the next day to me riding a bike up and down the aisles of the Riverdale Walmart at midnight.
Our fun summer thing on Monday was that Matt, Lyz, Georgia and Gracie were in town for the annual Kelly family reunion. and they drove up to our house to spend the evening with us. We ate tacos and of course visited the snow cone shack. For Olivia and her cousin Gracie, who had never before met, it was love at first sight.
Mirch came out to visit too, and after the Metcalf crew left, Mitch and I headed out to stop at Walmart then take him home. We also had a bike in the back of the car that he is going to borrow for a few days while his car is broken down. We left Syracuse at close to eleven, and hit the Walmart by his house. Then we remembered that the bike tires needed air, so we set off in search of a gas station with air.
Filling up bike tires doesn't sound too difficult, right?
Wrong. Remind me to never volunteer for any sort of bike repair duty in the future. First off, we couldn't find a gas station that had air. What is up with that? Do nobody's tires ever go flat anymore? Then when we finally found a place with air, you had to deposit two quarters into the meter before you could use it. Well, we had 50 cents between us, but no quarters. So Mitch unloaded the bike, then went to go inside the gas station to get quarters. And wouldn't you know it, the gas station was closed. The lights were on, but nobody was home. So, with Mitch cursing under his breath, he loaded the bike back into the car and we drove off to find somewhere we could trade our pile of nickels, dimes, and pennies for two quarters. We wound up at a McDonalds drive thru, and the very nice lady at the window somewhat grumpily obliged us. Quarters in hand, we headed back to the gas station, unloaded the bike, deposited the quarters and started to fill up the tires. The front tire filled up just fine. The evening was looking up. Then we got to the back tire. And disaster struck again. It was the weirdest valve I have ever seen. The pump would not fit on the valve. We both messed with it for a while, thinking surely we were just missing something, but no. It was some different kind of stupid valve and the stupid pump would not work on the valve no matter what. By now, Mitch was pretty much livid. He was already stressed about his car needing repairs, he has been walking to work and everywhere else he needed to go for about two weeks now, and he was really looking forward to having some wheels again, even if there were only two of them.
So I determined that no matter what it took I was going to get my boy fixed up with a bike before the night was through. And since it was nearly midnight, I better hurry. We headed back to Walmart, and I was a bit delirious from fatigue and all fired up to just buy him a brand new bike and solve all his problems. And that is how I came to be riding a bike up and down the aisles of Walmart at midnight. Then, just as I was finding a bike I really liked, Mitch had the genius revelation that we did not need to buy a whole bike. We could jsut buy a bike pump, with the right kind of attachment, and save me about $190. I tell you, that kid is brilliant.
That sounded like a plan, so we went for it. We even got a pump with the right kind of attachment. We bought it, ran out to the car,and got those lousy tires pumped up without even unloading the bike from the back of the car. We totally rocked it from that moment on.
And it only took us two hours to fill up those tires.
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