I Am Boymom...and Bike Mechanic

Ya know what today was in our house?  Bike Repair Day.  We have had 4 bikes in various states of repair laying around in the garage and on the back patio for months now.  With all the snow it's been too messy to ride, but the boys are ready to hit the streets again, so they started pumping up tires and getting ready for a trip to the store.

Then the problems started: One of the bikes has tires that won't hold any air.  And another bike doesn't have a chain.  And the third bike is pretty much just a frame at this point, because tires have been taken off and the seat is falling apart.  So out of all those bikes, only one actually functions.  So...there was only one thing to do.  Jump in the car and drive the boys to the store.  Not really.  It's kind of cold and windy and I haven't showered yet today, so tough luck boys, I ain't goin' nowhere!  Was what I thought.  But then I saw that disappointed red head droop and those brown eyes get all sad and that boy foot start kicking at the dirt.  Dang him and his cuteness!! 

"Fine, son.  Go get the tools and we'll see if we can fix a bike for you."  No patches or green slime to fix the flat tires, so we moved on to the bike with no chain.  We took the chain off the "parts" bike, which was no easy feat, I will just say now.  Thank goodness I had that chain fixer tool thing to help.  Getting it back on the decent bike got even more difficult.  It was too long.  My son started to walk away  in defeat.  What?!  Giving up?!  Not in my house, Little Man!  Only I get to quit when things get too hard!  You, on the other hand, do not.  Because I would be a sucky mom if I let you walk away thinking that it's okay to not do hard things.  My job is to make sure you are better than me. So gosh darn it, we are gonna fix this chain and fix it now so I don't have to feel bad about my mothering skills!  Oh yeah.  And also so you know how to fix a bike in case you ever need to do this when I'm not around.  That too. 

After lots of fights with the chain and the chain fixing tool thingy, we finally got the chain on the bike.  Holy crap what a complicated thing a chain can be!  It's just a string of links, you wouldn't think it would be that hard!  Anyway...then we had to air up the tires.  But we couldn't get the cap off the valve stems. After 10 minutes of looking for the pliers that should have been in the tool kit but were not, we finally mangled the caps off and pumped up the tires.

Then the seat was too low.  After another 10 minute search for hex key that actually fit (there are a LOT of hex key sizes and we had every size in the tool kit but the one we needed!)  we adjusted the seat.  Then he wanted to raise the handle bars.  Which we messed with for 15 minutes before realizing that we had loosened the wrong part to raise them.  By this time the entire neighborhood of boys was waiting on my kid to ride to the store, so he decided the handle bars could wait.  "That's good," I thought, "because my greasy hands are freezing and I'm kind of tired of the audience of 12 year olds who keep trying to give me directions and grabbing at the tools in my hands."  Probably I should have let them do it and saved myself some grief.  But by then I had fully invested emotionally in the whole project.  I was bonding and teaching my son some valuable life lessons, right?

Anyway...I was given the green light to quit so I waved at them as I ran into the house and off they went to the store. 

Where I had to meet them in the car 15 minutes later because my oldest kid forgot his wallet and no one had enough money to lend him for a drink.  ((Sigh.))   

My Neighborhood Isn't Fun Anymore

Would any of you mind if I vent for just a minute? I need to get something off of my chest so I can move on. It's been eating at me for a week now and I really need to let it go. So maybe if I write about it I can do that. Move on, I mean. Cause really, I am losing way too much sleep over this issue. The problem?

Little Man lost his bike to a thief last week. It has kind of put a damper on our summer. The bike was in our yard, up by the front porch and it was taken during daylight hours in between his trips back and forth to his friends' houses.

At first, I was kind of angry with Little Man, because truthfully? I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. He leaves his stuff out overnight all of the time. He is really not good about putting his scooter, bike or skateboard back in the garage when he's done.

But then I realized that he was in the process of his playtime and riding back and forth all afternoon. He had no reason to think that some idiot would walk up on our lawn and take his bike in the middle of the afternoon! We live in a relatively safe neighborhood and we've never really had a problem with people stealing around here. In fact, one of the neighbor kids leaves his bike in various spots around the neighborhood for days at a time without anyone even looking at it funny.

So it was a little shocking to think someone was brazen enough to step into my yard and steal something in broad daylight! And then I went from shocked to outright pissed off. Yes, Little Man does need to learn to put his stuff away and yes, this is going to be a tough lesson for him, but dang it! The bike was up in our yard! It wasn't on the sidewalk or in the middle of the street, it was in our yard and it was the middle of the day and what kind iof person just strolls up into someone else's yard and snags a kid's bike?!

Well, we had some leads. We called the police. Problem is, I never wrote down the serial number. There's only so much the police can do now. So far no one's talking. One thing all of the neighborhood moms and dads did notice as they were helping us look for the bike is that there seem to be a lot of bikes that have been spray painted white among a certain group of teenagers in the area. Weird. Do we have a bike chop shop in the hood? It also became apparent that there are lots of interesting relationships between families in our neighborhod that I was not aware of. Two of the families I thought I knew fairly well swore up and down that they knew who took the bike and they went so far as to tell me that they actually saw the kid on the bike several times.

The kid they were accusing is fairly new in the neighborhood and a few other parents had told me they've been having problems with the new family too, so the policeman and I went over to try to see if there was any truth to what we were being told. There wasn't. I was extremely embarrassed. The poor kid was embarrassed. The parents were very understanding and showed me the bike he was riding. It was NOT EVEN CLOSE to Little Man's bike, of which the accusers had seen a picture, so they KNEW this kid's bike was not the one we were looking for. The parents let the policeman search the yard and garage while they explained that the 2 families that had accused their son had recently started a major fight with their kids and had caused this family all kinds of problems since they had moved in. Great. Now I'm involved in the neighborhood drama!

So...I apologized, made some new friends and we all moved on. But still no bike. I offered a small reward, but still nothing. The neighborhood teenagers, 2 of which are kids of the 2 families that misdirected me, are suddenly very quiet around me and go to great lengths to avoid me. I have a feeling they know who took the bike. But I'm pretty sure I will never find out. The bike is gone and that's that. So are my good feelings toward some of my neighbors now and that makes me sad. My neighborhood doesn't feel the same anymore. I am constantly policing the area and always asking the kids who ride bikes in the desert by my house what they are doing. I don't feel like my kids can play out in the front yard and run in for a few minutes to get a drink and cool off without us having to worry about what's going to disappear. And I hate living like that. I hate not being able to trust the people who live around me.

Now most of the neighborhood is on alert and everyone tells me they share the same disappointment. We didn't think we lived in one of THOSE kind of neighborhoods where you always have to worry about people messing with your stuff. Apparently we do have to worry. Our neighborhood has lost its innocence. I guess it was just a matter of time. It just makes me mad. And sad.

The only good thing to come out of this is that Little Man is now psychotic about putting his stuff away. So I guess I should be glad for that.