What Happens at T & R

The best laid plans...Wednesday was the first day of my Vietnamese lessons, a free perk of the job, but before going I had a plan laid out for the morning. I was going to go climbing, even woke up earlier so I'd have time, but I had to stop by the bikeshop first to get my motto fixed. What was wrong with it? I'll get to that later...
I was planning on stopping back at the house after climbing for a shower and change of clothes before class. The class was taught at the same school I teach at, but only for us teachers, and taught by one of the Vietnamese TA's. The school has a dress code for teachers that we have to follow even if we come in on a day off: pants, tucked shirt, tie and shoes. I don't adhere to this, but I still didn't want to come to school in my sweat-stained climbing clothes.
So, a bowl of cereal later, I'm downstairs driving to the bikeshop. The repairs end up taking FOREVER. I was getting the bike rim replaced because its was dented, but I also got talked into a much needed replacement of my gear chains, an oil change, tighter brakes and I had to replace a passenger footrest that came off somehow. The chains take quite a bit of time to do, my ice coffee long drained. My butt goes numb from sitting on a metal stool that is barely a foot off the ground. After the mechanic's done with that there's still the rim to do. So he hands it over to another worker and motions for me that we need to go eat. He speaks no English. So we go around the corner and have a small lunch at a rice stall. I get some eel with ginger and meat stuffed tofu. The mechanic keeps trying to guide me through how I should eat. Showing me to wipe the chopsticks before use, making sure I drank my soup, that I used a spoon for the rice instead of sticks and even told me to wipe my mouth at the end! When we get back the wheel's done and I pay up. But when I drive a few meters down the road I can tell that the bike still has the same problem that I brought it in for. So with a quick u-turn I'm back at the spot shaking my head. The mechanic takes the bike for another spin, comes back and questioned me with the gestures of his arms whether I had crashed it into something. No, I try to explain, but...
The night before, not drunk but drinking, I had convinced my friend, Rob, that he needed to have a lesson, then and there, since the streets were pretty empty and he was still afraid of getting a bike. Rob, drinking and drunk, though I didn't think him to be, agreed very reluctantly under my ill advised persuasion. Outside of T&R Tavern I began to explain how the bike works, but he had already had a lesson and supposedly knew, so I got on the back and told him to drive to the end of the ally. Which he did. The short way. He drove across the street, straight into the metal shutters of a business that was thankfully closed. No fear, family and friends, there are no injuries to report at such a low speed and distance. After I managed to get him, to stop saying 'oh my god' repeatedly and turn the bike off I found myself laughing, as well as our friends across the street. Rob was the only one that wasn't. He was shaken with guilt and was down with a drop in confidence that he'll ever drive a bike again. I gave him a ride home, then noticing that my bike was having difficulty maintaining a straight line and that it kept wanting to turn left. Rob did the gentlemanly thing, offering to pay for repairs, but I declined. Partially because it was my fault for not knowing better than to let him drive drunk[without really knowing how to drive at all], and also because bike repairs are cheap to do, even at the worst of times.
So anyways, I try to gesture what happened to the mechanic, and he tells me that the bike has to get its frame hammered even. So he drives it off, I sit my self down on the stool that an eight year old would feel too grown up for, and look at my watch noticing that I have an hour till class. No time to climb. No time to even shower. So I leave my bike in their hands, after finding out its going to take an hour to fix, and grab a xe om[motorbike taxi] to school. Walking in with my helmet still on, ashamed to show my unkempt hair.
I had to take a driver back, too and got caught in some nasty rain, my coat still attached to my bike. But the bike was fixed and is now in better shape than ever before, so I guess that can count as a happy ending. Moral of the story: teach 'brake' before you teach 'accelerate'. There's another one too, can you guess what is?

[Side note: For those on the other side of the world watching the news about all the bad weather, I am in a pretty safe spot. We don't get earthquakes, and it is central Vietnam that gets the typhoons and flooding every year, not the south where I am. Plus, the Philippines serves as a protective wall against tsunamis(sorry Philippines). So aside from daily rains, nothing to worry about in my slice of Asia.]