My new Chevelle.

My favorite thing about the bike shop guy I talked to last night was that he was successfully able to explain to me that my bike was an overpriced piece of shit (and that's before I almost matched the cost of buying it in the repairs it needed after a decade of collecting dust in some random Asian family's garage) while simultaneously convincing me that it was the shit. Not many people can do that: "Man, your girlfriend is so ugly. But ugly is the new thing! I'm jealous." See? It's a difficult skill to acquire.

They'd said it would take a week to fix my piece of junk, a 12-speed Meridian that is nearly 30 years old. It took a month. Apparently a 9mm Cotter pin takes that long to arrive in the mail. The Pony Express could have moved a Ukrainian tank from the coast of Somalia to the Houston Ship Channel in less time. But such is life. I was just happy to hear the message on my phone Tuesday from Brent, another guy who works there, saying that she was ready for me to come pick up.

Brent is an example of why you shouldn't take ecstasy. He doesn't smile; he surely doesn't laugh; and his voice is about as expressive as Stephen Hawking's computer. Just Say No.

The other guy, though, was way nicer.

"How much did you pay for it?" he asked as I lingered around the door, waiting for Tony to finish his sandwich. I sheepishly told him. "Wow," he said, "that's a lot." (Grimace.) "But hey man, this baby's awesome!" (Don't try to make me feel better.) "These things are coming back in style, man. I bet you I've seen more of these old school bikes in the last three years than I saw my entire life before that -- and I'm FROM the 80's, dude." (Fashion is cyclical -- get it? Cycle?)

I asked him about the brakes -- they seem to be in a strange location.

"Oh, yeah, these ones... I would love to know how many lawsuits this bike company received over the years before they finally stopped putting brake handles right there." He pointed to the top ones. "Because... they don't work! Ha!" (Ha. Haa...) "Naw man, but seriously, this bike is the shit." (Do you mean that in the way a native speaker would mean it? Or do you mean it in the way Maria Elena, my friend from Rome means it? As in, "bad"?) "It's like driving an old school car," he said, before clarifying: "But it ain't a Mustang, I won't lie."

"More like an El Camino?" I asked, citing the first old, shitty car that came to mind.

"No, not even like an El Camino," he laughed. Not even that good? "It's more like a Chevelle."

I didn't know what a Chevelle was, but I took it to mean "bad."

"Well..."

"Hey man, you've got a bike!"

That I do. A $284 piece of crap with brakes that were made obsolete by the high number of lawsuits it generated. And with gear shifters harder to figure out than a girl's bra when you're 15. That creaks like Jeff Bagwell's right shoulder. But I've got a bike. And I'm happy about that.