Unlucky 13

13 February – the day couldn’t have started any sweeter with the morning run being timed beautifully for the first time – a bit cumbersome but everywhere I went everything was open and even when I logged on and still had the returns the first allocated trips sent me straight past the respective drops.  Probably helped by the fact that Shifty was dispatching and I was doing his regular runs but I wasn’t going to complain.  Some well crafted runs throughout the day – involved a bit more riding than I’ve been used to but I usually prefer it that way.  The day couldn’t be perfect however and a few mishaps caused a little strife at times.  Upon arriving at the end of one lengthy run I was supposed to drop two separate jobs to the one client but when I looked in my bag I could only find one.  Haven’t lost a trip yet and today wasn’t going to be the day – initially suspected that I might have never picked it up but upon visualising the recent jobs I seemed to remember one of the reg drops had a white envelope in it and there aren’t usually white envelopes in that drop.  Burned back to the State Attorney General and negotiated my way to the mailroom only to find a sign on the door stating that the mailroom was closed because a suspicious package had been found – desperately hoping that I wasn’t responsible for shutting down his office I worked my way in and lo and behold my missing trip was there – as I snuck out I waved the envelope at the cluster of people milling around the suspicious package sign and asked if this envelope had done it ... It turned out that they were holding a drill.  The second potentially major mishap was when I was doing what was to be my last trip of the day around 5 – as I was climbing Hunter St and trying to negotiate a gap across the Elizabeth Chifley junction I heard a snap and collapsed into the frame as my right crank broke clean off – I managed to get to a stop and get out of the way of the lumbering traffic but that was Chevette done for the day.  Spent the afternoon trying to find a replacement set of cranks (a lot harder than one would expect) and found a saviour in Pretty Boy whose partner happened to have an old set spare.  Had to take the train home and then to Marrickville (where Pretty Boy lived) - spent the evening repairing the bike (well, watching PB repair the bike and trying to absorb what he was doing – I’ve never seen someone get so excited about the various sizings of bike parts – it’s 26/8!  it’s 26/8!) and was incredibly well fed and taken care of.  And Catherine was absolutely adamant about not accepting and money for the parts.  These people are very special.   The incident did explain some of the creaking and the occasional scream of grinding metal that Chevette has been making lately – hopefully she’ll be a bit more tolerant of me from now on (at least until the next problem).