What Happens When Four Volunteers Help You Fix Your Bike?

           

            On Monday I spent a lot of the day re-reading Emmanuel Levinas’s “Meaning and Sense”. I downloaded the exam questions for April 26
            In the evening I took my vehicle to Bike Pirates to fix my front and back brakes. The first volunteer that helped me advised me to first of all clean my back brakes. Another volunteer came along and said that I should clean my bike. The bald guy with the handlebar moustache said I should take my brakes apart and clean them but he also advised me to change to a different brake system. He told me that low mounted systems are too exposed to dirt and salt to be practical. I said I’d change when this one can’t be fixed. When I tried to put my brakes back together the cable was too short, so they gave me another. At this point the guy that yelled at me last year started helping me. The moustached volunteer had advised me to turn my bike upside down to work on the breaks. The uptight guy told me that first of all I should never work on my bike upside down and that it wasn’t a “smart” way to work. He didn’t yell at me this time but he yelled at the guy at the stand next to mine, saying, “Put that tool down! Don’t EVER use that tool!” He chastised a young volunteer for calling to another volunteer across the room, telling him that he could walk over and speak to him. He seemed to be the one that knew what he was doing though, as even the moustached volunteer deferred to him. He spent some time trying to get my brakes to work and then gave up. It looked like I might have to change the brake system after all, but by them it was too late to start. I had been there for three hours and fourty minutes and nothing had really been resolved other than to resolve to return the next evening.