K-Mart Sucks

It seems to be true that you learn more from things that are broken than from things that work perfectly. For instance, a few more things go wrong with my bike and I'll be able to throw out a shingle that says "Bike Repairs While You Wait." Actually, it's not my bike - my bike was purchased at Target, and has worked perfectly for 12 years, and I traded it to my daughter for hers which was purchased in a moment of insanity from Kmart, and has always had one thing or another wrong with it.

I now know how to remove the back wheel, replace a tire, adjust the brakes, adjust the front derailleur, adjust the rear derailleur, remove the entire crappy plastic index shifting system, and jury rig an 18-speed bike to operate as a 6-speed while I wait for the new Shimano REVO 3x6 shifters to arrive by UPS so that I can install them. To those for whom this would be as easy as pie, let me just say that until this year, my bike know-how was limited to putting air in the tires.

What does this have to do with walking Catron County? I'm not going to walk the rest of the county. I'm going to do it by bicycle. I'm going to remove the spiders from my helmet and paint it hunter orange, and I'll wear my orange hunter safety vest, and buy a silly orange flag to put on the back of my bike, and a little repair kit covered in reflector tape, and I'll quite possibly look ridiculous - no, most definitely look ridiculous. But if I break down, I'll at least know the name and purpose of the broken part, which will comfort me as I sit in an orange heap by the side of the road waiting for help to arrive.