Sometime during the summer between semesters I had a job that finally swayed me to get a bike on campus, something that was really nice because you could travel anywhere you needed in a minute or two and the feeling of rushing down the streets with the wind blowing past you on a warm summer evening with the sun lazily setting is something that's beautiful and transcendent and can't quite be transcribed into words (though I tried to do it justice just now).

Then one night someone smashed a beer bottle on the road and when I ran over it my tire blew out. There wasn't a bike shop nearby to fix it but we had a bike co-op that had a bunch of inner tubes, and after fanangling to find one that matched mine I finally got it to work.

Well... mostly. Somehow the way my bike got cut up made it so even with replacements my tubes would get punctured and essentially I just needed a new tire entirely which was a total bitch to take care of and put my bike-riding on hiatus for a couple of weeks; plus, this was a bike I borrowed from a friend so I couldn't just get a new one.

That walk to work was then so much longer, so much less fun, and forced me to wake up so much earlier just to get to work on time. A small thing really, but it soured my mood and I got home later than I was used to, and no one likes getting sweaty while walking in the heat. And worst of all, no riding down the street for fun, basking in that incandescent glow of the evening sun.

These are perhaps just small inconveniences in the grand scheme – but small things compound until they become large obstacles that drag us down, a large chain of events that could've been avoided if we just didn't lose the small stuff in our lives.

... so don't break beer bottles on the street you degenerate fuck, just throw them in the recycling bin like a functioning member of society.