Please Don't Let Your Plastic Blow on Wilshire

During my lunch hour, I had to run a quick errand to the Merrill Lynch in Beverly Hills. I jumped on the bike, hit Wilshire and headed west.

About halfway there, the wind blows a big sheet of plastic into the road. It's about as thick as a grocery bag, but about two feet wide. It might've come off a construction site, I dunno. But of course it gets blown right in front of ME. Before I can maneuver around it, the damn thing gets under my front wheel and wrapped in my spokes.

I figure the wheel's gonna seize and I'm about to eat some street. For one brief moment, my thought was, "Oh, so THIS is how I die." But it didn't freeze the wheel - it got caught up around the hub and wrapped itself around the brake pad.

I pulled over to the side of the road and yanked the plastic out. By some weird coincidence, a green SUV (there's an oxymoron) had broken down on Wilshire, and a cop was using his squad car to push it to the side right in front of me, so I wasn't gonna get plastered by on-coming traffic. Thanks, LAPD.

Very carefully, I remount and hit the road. The front brake works, but it's a little mushy - there's obviously some little piece still in there. Giving traffic tons of space, leaning on the rear brake and playing it ultra-careful, I managed to get to ML and back to the office without dying.

To be blunt, I'm not Mr. Mechanic. I'm the exact opposite of Mr. Mechanic. If you told me that the core workings of an internal combustion engine involved pixie dust and magic, I'd shrug and say, "Okay, cool." My point is, I'm sure if I had the tools and the skill, I'd be able to get the brake pad off, dig out the plastic and get it back on without a problem.

That isn't the situation. So now, just to make sure I don't get a case of the mushy brakes while I'm going down I-10, I gotta take it into the dealership. Luckily, it's around the corner from the lair. Unluckily, it's gonna cost me cash I'm trying to save so I can move.

It's way better than taking a header on Wilshire, but fuck... nothing can be easy, can it?