…before we know what it is.
Yesterday, I went for a 6.5 mile bike ride. Took about 29 minutes. Nearly two thirds of the way through, I heard a strange noise coming from my gears. I looked down, going 10 mph, and tried to decipher the problem. But the gears were still changing fine. The chain was still catching. So I kept riding, satisfied that I’d figure it out when I got home. While I continued, however, I began to imagine the potential problem:
- broken bike stand
- bent derailure
- bent gear wheel
- some other unusual problem that I wouldn’t be able to figure out
I need a new bike, I thought. I need a new $300 dollar bike. One with arm rests on the front for the long stretch of flat road, good gears, lightweight. I can’t keep riding this old thing (we’d got it from a bike tech friend who’d snatched it off of craigslist to repair and resell).
At the next light, I finally decided to check out what the strange noise was. When I finally discovered what it was, I felt sheepish. My rear reflector had come loose and was bouncing against the tire. I finger tightened the bolt and kept going.
I admonished myself that while I was busy buying fancy new bikes in my head, solving a problem I didn’t have, I was about to lose my protection. So often that’s true in life: we imagine that behind the symptoms we experience there’s a huge problem that needs to be solved; and while we’re busy cogitating on how to solve that problem, our defenses are down.
Club Fritch 