About three months ago I decided to buy a bike. I bought it new, very certain of what I wanted. It wouldn't have to go very fast, just be comfortable for my twice daily trips between the Outer Sunset and Portrero Hill. And have a luggage rack because I always fill my backpack way too full.

After about 2 weeks of using my bike I was doored. It was perhaps more annoying than anything else. The woman who did it started saying very quietly "watch out..." she kept opening the door, I couldn't stop fast enough. She wasn't even in a hurry. I didn't want to make her worry though, so I didn't take her information.

I suspect that my brake (which was front mounted) took some damage then that I didn't realize. A friend of mine offered me a ride home the next night, but my bike wouldn't fit in his car. I'm guessing that agitated the earlier damage to my bike because after that my brake kept clamping shut. I fiddled with it a bit and thought I had it fixed... until about one foot down a very steep hill in the outer sunset.

When my brake stopped working.

I panicked
couldn't get the pedal backwards thing to work
knew I was going to crash.

Damn it, this is the Outer Sunset...
Where is the grass? the bushes?
I had to stop myself
the slope was going to get steeper
I steered into a car.

I realized later about 5 things I could have done that would have been better to stop me. Oh well.

I was lucky, someone saw me from the balcony. They started having a conversation with me, apparently I was coherent the whole time through. Kept describing my symptoms, and told the joke about the Buddhist and the hot dog vender. It was 1AM and they were in town on vacation. One was a nurse, one had been in many bicycling accidents. They drove me to the hospital.

But back to the bike. The wheel was bent at an unnatural angle. It was unridable. It was in the shop for about a week.

The night I got it back it was stolen. Luckily I had either a very considerate or a very stupid thief. They left their bike behind.

So now I have an old mountain bike.
Good: More gears. Nice blue color.
Bad: No rack on back, too small for me.

I still had to ride it home. That's when I rigged up my helmet light from an LED flashlight that had been in the lost and found for a few weeks. I had stupidly left my lights on my bike that night.

About a week later the seat tilted back disturbingly.
The next day it went back a little more.
Then a little more.
Until it wiggled freely.
Noticing that it preferred to wiggle backwards I figured i could fix this simply enough and make my bike rideable again. All I had to do was tie the front of the seat to the frame.
Remembering the old story of a business started on a shoestring, it amused me to fix my bike with one. So I took the shoestring that I had tied around my thermos to hold it to my bike and used it to give myself a method of transport again.
Why do I have spare shoestrings? I like reusing old things, and I've had the same pair of green shoelaces on my last three pairs of shoes, transplanting it from one to the other. This frees up new shoestrings for various projects and allows me to keep my favorite pair of green shoelaces on prominent display.