The worst day as a bike delivery guy begins in New York, with a snowstorm. Icy tracks that grab your wheel and slip the ground out from under you. Your breath freezes on your face and your chest shudders as the air rushes down your zipper into your core.
On the first run you get a pinch flat, on the rear no less, which would normally be just annoying, but it's horrific weather and your wheel is covered with dirty, icy sludge. Your fingers quickly become raw, pink, and useless. You're as far from the restaurant as you could possibly be. Digging through your bag you realize, stupidly, that you've somehow forgotten your patch kit and in an inexplicable coincidence the other two tubes you have with you are pinch-flatted as well. Swearing doesn't make you feel any better, so you let a cool calm wash over you, accepting the situation. You call up the restaurant and tell them to hold off on orders for a half an hour. Ride back hunched over your handlebars like a kid in 2007 trying to win a skid competition, your useless rim squirrelling and dinging the pavement. It's still snowing, and the cars passing you have no comprehension that things aren't going well, nor could they really give a shit. The bike shop next to the restaurant is closed. You're new to the city and don't have any friends nearby. There's another bike delivery guy down the street, but he doesn't speak english and when you finally get him to lend you a patch kit the glue's dry and useless.
The thirty minutes becomes one hour, two. Finally, after a hundred failed solutions, you're prying the tire off the wheel, eyes and soul a smooth static white, wondering how you got suckered into this position, into this terrible aching spot where a thousand things were going on in the world, breaking systems looming large, a million possibilities waiting for their catalyst, and you were the rube forced to spend your concern on some missed orders and a flat bicycle tire.
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