Bike Repair. The Dilph Way!
...yeah, you lot know me. You all know what I'm capable of, and where my usual proclivities lie.
Therefore, with a heading like that, you /already/ know this is gunna be bad, and involve blood, pain, scarring and general angst, caused by a combination of bad luck and/or ineptitude.
I hate to disappoint...
Tuesday morning, I'd ended up pulling the late shift at work; meant I had to be in at 1130, work through til 8pm. So a lovely nice sleepin was on the cards. And given my usual state of sleep deprivation - especially of late - I took very full advantage of this fact. Given my alarm usually goes off about 530, sleeping till 10 was an unheard of luxury... so up, and shower, and shave, and catch up on LJ, and I jump on the chariot to get myself to work about... 1045? And promptly notice that I'd picked up a puncture the last time I rode, and the tyre had since emptied. Fun fun.
Now, it's a 20minute ride to work, usually. I try to get in ten-fifteen early, as a rule of thumb, just to give myself a margin for error; so I should be able to change out a tyre and still get in on time. At least in theory. So I give the boss a buzz to let her know I might end up a little late, and dig out my tyre levers and spare tube.
I spend the next ten minutes swearing at the damn tyre, because no matter /what/ I do, I can't get the bead off the rim; and until I can manage to get the tyre off, the tube ain't gunna get replaced. Finally I realise that while the tube is flat, there's still enough air in it to keep the tyre on through internal pressure, and I need to bleed the air out of it before I'll be able to get anywhere. So off to the release valve I go... and get nowhere fast. Time is starting to become a factor, so what's the quickest way to empty the air out of a tube?
You slash the fucker.
I can get the tyre up enough to expose the tube, barely. So I grab the closest sharp thing - a steak knife - and use my tyre levers to pry up the tyre. Then I hold the tyre clear with my right, while I stab with the left.
The way I've exposed the tube means I'm limited to a horizontal stab along the line of the rim; the knife is... not the sharpest. So I have to put significant grunt into it, before the rubber stops stretching, and gives in to the inevitable. Of course, it gives in very suddenly. And my right hand is on the same plane. You know what happens next, don't you?
Yep. Mr Blade met Mr Hand quite suddenly. No pain, surprisingly; just a knife buried about a centimeter and a half into the meaty pad at the base of my thumb/palm. My first thought? "Fuck, this is gunna bleed everywhere." It did. No spurtiness, thankfully - just an instant river winding down my palm. I immediately take myself off to the bathroom, and rinse the bastard off. This just means I'm getting a constant supply of fresh blood, and it doesn't seem to want to stop any time soon. So I do what Papadopolii have done for time out of mind when presented with serious injuries - whack a bandaid on it. We are a tough, nay, a suicidal people, and our first aid skills are negligible. Surprising any of us lived long enough to breed, really.
Said bandaid is, not surprisingly, utterly inadequate. The little absorbent pad has soaked up so much blood by the time I've finished putting it on, it's already beading on the other side. More serious medical intervention will be required. Like... two bandaids!
...shaddap. It worked. Kinda. It at least blocked enough of the flow so I could use my hand again without leaving a blood trail. Well, much of one. Enough so that I can finish changing out the bike tyre, anyway. Although I'm sure I'll need to get the carpets cleaned before I move out...
Anyways. Bike is now operational. Me... slightly less so. So I jump on the chariot, and ride in to work. Because at work, we have a first aid officer. And I'm late. Halfway in... the tyre goes flat again. In my blood-drenched confusion, I've managed to pinch the new tube while installing it... which just adds insult to injury, really. If carving myself up was the price I had to pay to get the bike fixed, then fine, I can live with that. But to carve myself up and obtain /no/ end result... that's just rude. If I've had to bleed on it to get it fixed, then the fucker damn well STAYS fixed. That's the rules. The bike broke the rules. Tuesday is /not/ looking to be a good day.
So I limp into the city - by this stage pretty well my whole hand is covered by the slow leakage from under my bandaids. There's a nice trickle that has managed to run the whole length of my thumb, before a droplet congealed on my thumbnail. Kinda cool, really. I drop the chariot at the first bike shop I find, and get a pro to fix it for me. Properly, this time. That'll take an hour or so, so I leave it there, and cab the rest of the way into work... much to the horror of the cabbie. I manage not to bleed on his cab though, so it's all good.
Wander in to work, log in to all my usual stuff and get set up for the day; then I go find the boss to apologise for lateness (It's about 1145 at this point). She laughs at me and my endless bike disasters... and then sees my hand. She turned impressively white - weaker stomach than I thought, I guess - and murmurs something about getting myself cleaned up. So I wander over to the first aid cabinet, grab some gauze and suchlike, and start poking around for a disinfectant type dealie to clean myself up with.
The first aid officer shows up, takes a look at me - the scab appears to have broken whilst I was rooting around in the cabinet, and my cupped palm is now on the verge of overflow. So I'm dispatched to the closest sink post-haste, and I try to clean off the crusty bits. And remove the sad remnants of my bandaids. The flow hasn't noticably slowed, and my palm - the Mount of Venus, in palmistry terms - is swollen to at least triple its usual size. The first-aid lady looks at this, grabs the biggest bandage she has, and tells me I need to go get stitches. Now. The boss is in agreement, so my hand is converted into a mummy for the trip, and I go for a walk to the nearest medical clinic.
Said clinic, when I tell em why I'm there, decline to see me; with the depth of the cut, they're afraid I've gone in far enough to fuck up tendons, and want me to see a specialist. So I wander off to the emergency ward, where they unwrap me, take a look at the cut and pronounce me non-urgent. I get a third set of wrappings - I'm beginning to feel like some sore of medical-fetish hand model, by this stage - and sit me in a corner to wait for a doc.
I'm waiting a shade over three hours, interspersed with calls from my boss - "Are you ok? Can we do anything? Just go home when you're patched up, we've got things under control." Of course, being the stubborn little git I am, I insist I'm coming back to work once they've patched me up - and in my own defence, I've still got no pain, and I can work one-handed if necessary. And the guy they had covering for me would end up doing a twelve hour shift, which is, y'know, not cool.
So they pull me in, flush out the wound with saline, do range of motion tests and poke about in the wound to make sure everything is OK structurally, before giving me a clean bill of health. I've managed to miss everything critical, so all I needed was stitches. And a tetanus booster. They sew me up - three stitches - give me a course of antibiotics, just in case, and send me on my way. And I go off to work, finish my shift, and all is right with the world.
...hey. At least I actually saw a doctor this time. I'm improving in my old age.
Therefore, with a heading like that, you /already/ know this is gunna be bad, and involve blood, pain, scarring and general angst, caused by a combination of bad luck and/or ineptitude.
I hate to disappoint...
Tuesday morning, I'd ended up pulling the late shift at work; meant I had to be in at 1130, work through til 8pm. So a lovely nice sleepin was on the cards. And given my usual state of sleep deprivation - especially of late - I took very full advantage of this fact. Given my alarm usually goes off about 530, sleeping till 10 was an unheard of luxury... so up, and shower, and shave, and catch up on LJ, and I jump on the chariot to get myself to work about... 1045? And promptly notice that I'd picked up a puncture the last time I rode, and the tyre had since emptied. Fun fun.
Now, it's a 20minute ride to work, usually. I try to get in ten-fifteen early, as a rule of thumb, just to give myself a margin for error; so I should be able to change out a tyre and still get in on time. At least in theory. So I give the boss a buzz to let her know I might end up a little late, and dig out my tyre levers and spare tube.
I spend the next ten minutes swearing at the damn tyre, because no matter /what/ I do, I can't get the bead off the rim; and until I can manage to get the tyre off, the tube ain't gunna get replaced. Finally I realise that while the tube is flat, there's still enough air in it to keep the tyre on through internal pressure, and I need to bleed the air out of it before I'll be able to get anywhere. So off to the release valve I go... and get nowhere fast. Time is starting to become a factor, so what's the quickest way to empty the air out of a tube?
You slash the fucker.
I can get the tyre up enough to expose the tube, barely. So I grab the closest sharp thing - a steak knife - and use my tyre levers to pry up the tyre. Then I hold the tyre clear with my right, while I stab with the left.
The way I've exposed the tube means I'm limited to a horizontal stab along the line of the rim; the knife is... not the sharpest. So I have to put significant grunt into it, before the rubber stops stretching, and gives in to the inevitable. Of course, it gives in very suddenly. And my right hand is on the same plane. You know what happens next, don't you?
Yep. Mr Blade met Mr Hand quite suddenly. No pain, surprisingly; just a knife buried about a centimeter and a half into the meaty pad at the base of my thumb/palm. My first thought? "Fuck, this is gunna bleed everywhere." It did. No spurtiness, thankfully - just an instant river winding down my palm. I immediately take myself off to the bathroom, and rinse the bastard off. This just means I'm getting a constant supply of fresh blood, and it doesn't seem to want to stop any time soon. So I do what Papadopolii have done for time out of mind when presented with serious injuries - whack a bandaid on it. We are a tough, nay, a suicidal people, and our first aid skills are negligible. Surprising any of us lived long enough to breed, really.
Said bandaid is, not surprisingly, utterly inadequate. The little absorbent pad has soaked up so much blood by the time I've finished putting it on, it's already beading on the other side. More serious medical intervention will be required. Like... two bandaids!
...shaddap. It worked. Kinda. It at least blocked enough of the flow so I could use my hand again without leaving a blood trail. Well, much of one. Enough so that I can finish changing out the bike tyre, anyway. Although I'm sure I'll need to get the carpets cleaned before I move out...
Anyways. Bike is now operational. Me... slightly less so. So I jump on the chariot, and ride in to work. Because at work, we have a first aid officer. And I'm late. Halfway in... the tyre goes flat again. In my blood-drenched confusion, I've managed to pinch the new tube while installing it... which just adds insult to injury, really. If carving myself up was the price I had to pay to get the bike fixed, then fine, I can live with that. But to carve myself up and obtain /no/ end result... that's just rude. If I've had to bleed on it to get it fixed, then the fucker damn well STAYS fixed. That's the rules. The bike broke the rules. Tuesday is /not/ looking to be a good day.
So I limp into the city - by this stage pretty well my whole hand is covered by the slow leakage from under my bandaids. There's a nice trickle that has managed to run the whole length of my thumb, before a droplet congealed on my thumbnail. Kinda cool, really. I drop the chariot at the first bike shop I find, and get a pro to fix it for me. Properly, this time. That'll take an hour or so, so I leave it there, and cab the rest of the way into work... much to the horror of the cabbie. I manage not to bleed on his cab though, so it's all good.
Wander in to work, log in to all my usual stuff and get set up for the day; then I go find the boss to apologise for lateness (It's about 1145 at this point). She laughs at me and my endless bike disasters... and then sees my hand. She turned impressively white - weaker stomach than I thought, I guess - and murmurs something about getting myself cleaned up. So I wander over to the first aid cabinet, grab some gauze and suchlike, and start poking around for a disinfectant type dealie to clean myself up with.
The first aid officer shows up, takes a look at me - the scab appears to have broken whilst I was rooting around in the cabinet, and my cupped palm is now on the verge of overflow. So I'm dispatched to the closest sink post-haste, and I try to clean off the crusty bits. And remove the sad remnants of my bandaids. The flow hasn't noticably slowed, and my palm - the Mount of Venus, in palmistry terms - is swollen to at least triple its usual size. The first-aid lady looks at this, grabs the biggest bandage she has, and tells me I need to go get stitches. Now. The boss is in agreement, so my hand is converted into a mummy for the trip, and I go for a walk to the nearest medical clinic.
Said clinic, when I tell em why I'm there, decline to see me; with the depth of the cut, they're afraid I've gone in far enough to fuck up tendons, and want me to see a specialist. So I wander off to the emergency ward, where they unwrap me, take a look at the cut and pronounce me non-urgent. I get a third set of wrappings - I'm beginning to feel like some sore of medical-fetish hand model, by this stage - and sit me in a corner to wait for a doc.
I'm waiting a shade over three hours, interspersed with calls from my boss - "Are you ok? Can we do anything? Just go home when you're patched up, we've got things under control." Of course, being the stubborn little git I am, I insist I'm coming back to work once they've patched me up - and in my own defence, I've still got no pain, and I can work one-handed if necessary. And the guy they had covering for me would end up doing a twelve hour shift, which is, y'know, not cool.
So they pull me in, flush out the wound with saline, do range of motion tests and poke about in the wound to make sure everything is OK structurally, before giving me a clean bill of health. I've managed to miss everything critical, so all I needed was stitches. And a tetanus booster. They sew me up - three stitches - give me a course of antibiotics, just in case, and send me on my way. And I go off to work, finish my shift, and all is right with the world.
...hey. At least I actually saw a doctor this time. I'm improving in my old age.