Why Kate Will Never Have a BIke

First, I apologize for the near-constant updates and the fact that very few of them have much to do with Sweden lately.

Now for a wondrous story of why Kate will never have a bike. This story actually begins many years ago: the first time I got heatstroke.
I was innocently visiting a friend in Riverside, when she suggested we go visit her friend who lived approximately five miles away. Given that we were 14 at the time and her mother's response to driving us was "are you kidding?" we needed another mode of transportation. Her suggestion? "Let's ride bikes!" now naturally I had been on a bike approximately twice in the last four years and I am fundamentally opposed to getting off the couch for any reason, but I decided that riding five miles in a desert to visit someone was somehow a good plan. It wasn't. After a few miles I turned red, started shaking, and seriously considered vomiting. Yet I decided to push on. How I got to that house I will never know. I guess children (or near-children) are fairly resilient. Thankfully her parents took pity on me, or at least decided that they would feel mildly guilty if I died along the road and got eaten by buzzards and no one could identify my corpse, but they knew deep down inside. Anyway, they gave us a ride home.

My second story is shorter. I was in Sebastopol visiting Sierra, when once again someone suggested a 5 mile trek. Remembering my last experience, I was hesitant. I quickly told myself it wouldn't happen to me (ignoring the fact that it already had). The trek was slightly uphill and while beautiful, also very painful. I did not manage to get heatstroke, but it did nearly kill my appetite, which was unfortunate because we were making a trek to get breakfast at a truly awesome place whose name I can't remember so I'll never be able to go again. I decided then and there that bikes are bad things.

So I moved to Uppsala, Sweden, where everyone rides bikes. I knew this would be bad, but I didn't realize just how bad. First, I got a free bike. However, the bike was nearly completely rusted in very part that makes a bike move. The brakes squeaked and peddling made a noise that resembled horses. This didn't bother me when there were others around, but it did echo my own misery and dislike of bike riding. Plus I couldn't brake without inviting stares from everyone in a 1 mile radius. I also experienced a previously mentioned epic wipe-out.

He was not that attractive

So I decided to buy a new bike from a shady looking Turkish man my roommate suggested. When I asked if he would buy it back at the end of the year he responded with "I don't buy bikes, only sell them." This led to a mental image of him in a ninja stealing bikes under the cover of darkness with three ninja accomplices.

All was fine for the first mile or so, until I was riding to a club. I missed my exit and had to ride down a curb, figuring nothing could go wrong. Something went wrong. The chain fell off. I don't mean normal falling off that can be fixed in 30 seconds with no harm done. I mean epic fall off. When it was put back on, it fell off just to tell me it could. I wound up walking home from the club, because I realized something was majorly wrong with the bike.

Almost a week later I got around to going back to the "FUCKING TURKISH MAN" as I had taken to calling him. He fixed it, no problem.

That night, I went to another club, because if you read my blog you will be forced to conclude that this is all I do. Actually I also spend a lot of time drinking coffee and updating my blog. Anyway, after I went to the club, I tried to leave with my bike. I put my key in the lock and turn. Only then do I realize my key has broken in half and is now useless. I do not have a spare. Today I need to go and get someone to cut my bike free if I don't get too lazy and go home after class. This means that in the last 2 weeks of having this new bike (which, by the way also makes a horrible noise when I peddle to echo my own despair) I have ridden it approximately 4 times.

The conclusion: Kate is not meant to have a bike.