Commentary by Wayne Lee
June is only half over and already it has been an ordeal. The journey began on the third when I had to take Da Beast into very south Medford for an overhaul. It needed new brake pads and a replacement of the front rotor for the disc brake and other basic maintenance. Bolts were tightened, the chain was lubed, and I was ready to rock and roll.
It was as if the bike was fresh out of the box and it was such a nice day, I took the scenic ride home. Unfortunately, they didn’t put it back exactly the way I brought it in. I had customized the bike with white, battery-operated Christmas lights for night riding and used the existing zip ties to support them. They ignored the lights and did not zip tie the line as I had done. The result was that the line got chewed up by the chain and is no longer useful.
Oh well, the lights were fifty percent off after Christmas, and it was a five-dollar investment down the drain. However, once I got it home and attempted to park the monster, it fell over and the control panel broke, rendering Da Beast useless. It now sits on my front porch as an expensive paperweight that only runs under pedal power.
Then I was unable to attend the city council meeting via Zoom because it wouldn’t accept my password and told me to try again in 30 minutes. By then it would have been too late.
In the meantime, my daughter was insisting I leave Oregon and come live with her in Connecticut. She just leased a four-bedroom home. Evidently this is her plan in the making of which I was unaware. Now I have no problem with no longer living alone but giving me 60 days to pack up and leave is not a viable option. It’s not like I just reside here and can pack up and go at any time. I’m established in this community after two decades and have many contacts and responsibilities.
It was more stress than I needed, which didn’t help my stomach at all. Eventually, I think her husband intervened because she backed down and made a compromise offer to fly me out to the East Coast in mid-August for a one-week vacation to see for myself what she has in mind. We’ll see how the rest works out. On the one hand, I’m established here. On the other hand, five years of living alone with no one to talk to but the cats is not my idea of retirement.
But the month of June wasn’t done with me yet. Last week I lost both cable television and my internet connection. At first, I thought I hadn’t paid the bill. However, I called and got this AI voice that told me I was paid in full, later telling me it was “technical difficulties” and it would be up and running by 4 p.m.
Well, 4 p.m. came and went. Tired of dealing with AI, I asked to talk to an actual human being. I was routed to a call center in Arkansas where I was informed; they only deal with small businesses. I was transferred to another call center in the Midwest where they noted my equipment was so old, it could no longer handle the increased speed of the data input, and they wanted to send me new gear that I was supposed to install myself in a couple of days. Instead, I had them schedule one of their service people to come out the very next day to switch everything out.
The service guy was extremely helpful, even going out of his way to show me how to reboot my computer even though that wasn’t part of his job. All I had was a blank screen with a Google icon that only allowed me guest access. Once I figured out which password was the right password was I able to recover all my existing files and be up and running again. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading these words.
So, on this Father’s Day, life is almost back to normal, or at least what passes for normal in my world.
