You wouldn’t believe the day I had yesterday. Joe, Fredd, and I went for a ride. I put my keyfob in Fredd’s backpack, as I haven’t gotten a bike pack yet. We left campus and followed 520 down to Marymoor. I kept thinking to myself “I don’t want to ride back UP this hill”. We got to the park, rode around a bit, had some fluids, and watched folks climbing the rock. I spent most of the time bitching about how much it was going to suck going back up the hill.

At any rate, we left, and as soon as we got to The Hill, my rear derailleur (shifting mechanism thingy) busted, rendering my bike useless. Joe and Fredd were a bit ahead of me, so neither of them saw this. Joe, being the stud-boy that he is, took frequent breaks so he was almost always in sight. Fredd, on the other hand, is a complete nimrod. Never did see him again. So up the hill I meandered, periodically wiping sweat from my eyes, watching traffic go by with ease at an increasingly enviable speed, and wondering if Fredd would be waiting at my car when I finally returned. Or even IF I would return.

So Joe eventually took a long break, allowing me to catch up. He saw my chain dragging lazily along behind me, and muttered something resembling “Oh, I thought you were just being a big wussy.” I mentioned my concern about Fredd having my keyfob, to which he responded “Would he just leave like that?” I think I remember offering Joe a look which simultaneously expressed “Dude, I have no freakin’ idea, but I hope not” and “Don’t ask me questions unless you’re going to pay big bucks for a sizzling Russian girl to rub my feet later.” He, apparently being not interested in paying any hot girl of random nationality to rub any part of my body, rode ahead to see if he could catch Fredd.

I plodded along, over the river, through the woods, day-dreaming of the delirious joy that is air conditioning, when Joe’s little noggin popped out from behind a bush. Bastard’s damn sneaky for a 230 pounder. Scared the poopy out of me. “He’s not there bud” was all he said.

Sure enough, I return to the cars, which earlier in the day had numbered 3. Now, as Joe had promised, there were 2. I find it interesting how the brain works when faced with such a dilemma. One tends to first pause and gaze at the situation blankly, as if seeing someone pick up a raisin from the sidewalk and eat it. Then one progresses to identifying options or ways to deal with said scenario. I, unfortunately, had VERY few options.

Keys; of course, in the car.
Phone with Fredd’s phone number; in the car.
Wallet; in the car.
Emergency Infiniti door key; in my wallet, in the car.
Cardkey to enter my building to use phone or look up Fredd’s number; in my wallet, in the car.
Money to get food, booze, or previously mentioned Russian girl; in my wallet, in the car.
iPAQ PDA for surfing porn while deciding what to do next; in the car.

As you can see, I was notably screwed. There was, of course, one little lifesaver present. Joe. We went to Joe’s office, I remoted to my PC to look up Fredd, but his cell wasn’t in my Contacts. I called my boss at home to get it, he was on the phone. I called his wife’s cell to ask her to get him off the phone. No answer. I finally found Infiniti’s roadside assistance number on their web site and gave them a ring. The short version of that is that if you don’t know the last 6 digits of your VIN, they’ll treat you like you’re some fuzzy rodent found lounging in their medicine cabinet. After a while Jenny decided that she could look me up by name. “Wow, really? You can do that? Gee whiz, technology these days, I tell ya!” Nice enough girl, I just wasn’t feeling my usual fruity goodness springing forth. She told me that some dude with a crowbar would arrive at my car within the hour, we said our sad goodbyes, and ended our relationship on a good note. My boss called back, gave me Fredd’s cell number, I called, left a few expletives on his voicemail, and went outside to wait for my knight to arrive, riding his brilliant white … tow truck. He was there in 15 minutes, and actually the truck was a rather disappointing sky blue.

Ok, so to wind up the story, Mr. Knight popped my door lock in about 4 minutes flat. We opened the door and set off the alarm, which I now know actually works. Just as I disabled the alarm, who should pull up? Fredd. With my keyfob.

What I learned from this experience:

Don’t let other people carry your stuff.
Walking sucks.
Joe’s a good friend.
Fredd’s a dick.

That’s all, I’m done.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2004 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.