TO DO: Make sure your tarp is long enough...

The bus would only be there for 5 minutes...
No sweat I thought, luck's on my side most of the time, I can get this here XtraCycle disassembled and into a box in time - I mean, all I had left was the front wheel! So in the San Francisco Amtrak office, out on the piers overlooking the Bay Bridge, I kneeled down in front of my bike like young Arthur at the sword in the stone, ready to perform the operation that my dad had taught me to do when I was 8 years old. A smile broke out across my face - after packing all night, not sleeping, and pedaling like a maniac through SF morning traffic, I'd made it in time, and now I was going to catch this bus, and soon be on a train, my favorite mode of long-distance transport, sleeping like a baby watching the West go by, gonna go rock the bike in Utah for 5 weeks...
I grabbed the knob and quick-release and gave a twist... but to my surprise, there wasn't the well-greased feeling of metal skewer sliding smoothly in a tire hub.
Nothing.
Huh?
So I grabbed tighter and twisted harder. Nothing.
What in the world?
I looked at the hub more closely, my heart starting to beat a little faster:
the front wheel was totally rusted to my fork - welded, more like it. I started to panic. What the hell do I do now, I didn't bring any pliers or wrenches with me...
My mind raced back to the tarp I used to cover the XtraCycle when I put it up for the night at The Pink Palace, that old tarp that wasn't quuuiiiite long enough to cover the front wheel... all that rain... shit! I ran out to the bus driver and said WAIT man! Wait just a few minutes, wheel's rusted, pliers, I find, wait, be back... or something.
I ran through the fishermen and tourists, waiters sweeping under the tables, asking anybody who looked like a plier-carryin kind of person if they had pliers I could borrow. A phone man who looked like Santa Claus took pity on me, and told me, hey man I got some pliers over in my truck. Painfully slowly, he started walking over there truck while I bounced up and down all around him like a 7 year old brother at your high school house party. He flinked open the side hatch and pulled out all I wanted for Christmas at that moment. I almost kissed Santa Claus on his big fat slightly drunk nose. I ran as fast as I could back to the bus - I GOT PLIERS! I GOT PLIERS! HOLD THE BUS! BE BACK, HOLD! and ran back to the station office, throwing myself on my frontwheel like George Foreman falling off a trampoline - with a stuttering thud, I fumbled to get the pliers on the quick release - got it - I gripped the shit out of it - tug - yank - hand about to explode... "Last call for the bus to Emeryville, last call." Shit! Wait! The tire gave! IT GAVE! I spun furiously at the wheel, trying to imagine how I was going to have the time to tape up the box as well... Nevermind, nevermind that now. It's off! I threw the bike into the box with a cacauphony of clank and started pawing at the cardboard flaps. "The 1632 to Emeryville has left. The 1632 has left, thank you." The sound hit me like water does when you have all your clothes on - it was like a brain disconnect - bus has left, but I'm not on it. Wait a second - I'm here. Here now. And that bus is just, not here anymore.
A smile started to break across my face like the sun rising over Berkeley across the bay. It was like when the water finally gets to the last dry inch of your foot inside your shoe and you realize there's no escaping it: you're totally wet, and you got all your clothes on, it's not the situation you expected, but goddamn it! Let's enjoy baby!
I pedaled home feeling like - I did what I could. All's well. And slept til 8pm that night.
I caught the train the next morning. And all was well.