That was the week that was

It started out on a Sunday, as many weeks do. I was spending the weekend doing things I like to do - cleaning up the branches of a fallen tree, transplanting some raspberry bushes, getting a few chores done in preparation for a bike ride. But when I went to the garage, the bike was gone, stolen from under my suburban nose in broad daylight while I was oblivious in the garden a few feet away.

I was bummed out. Worse things can happen, it's true, but I had grown attached to the dark green Trek in the year and a half I had ridden it, and I was really looking forward to riding it that day. With it disappeared a nice little rechargeable headlight and taillight and a toolkit containing Allen wrenches, tire irons, and a spare tube. It happens every day to somebody; that's life in the small city. I suspect that the perpetrators have no idea what they're doing.

No doubt my downcast attitude colored the other events of the week, which had already looked challenging. I had rescheduled some vacation days to focus on getting a new project launched, and I had some other, nonwork-related schedule issues to work out. And who doesn't have decisions to make in the course of a week?

"Return," said The Book of Changes, "brings exit and entry, somewhere to go with firm strength, going out and coming in without trouble." A few days later it said, "Advance and illuminate virtue by reflecting it under stress, going to three meetings a day." That sounds about right.

What's remarkable now, in retrospect, is how quickly things got checked off my list of problems, as if compartmentalizing the sources of stress and irritation made it easier to address them individually, take a breath and move on to the next one, as if each was separate from the other, which they never are. But I can only do one thing at a time, so I had to take each item of unfinished business out of context and treat it as a single entity. No calls yet from the Nobel committee on my amazing discovery.

So I hastily put together the launch that I couldn't put off any longer, and lo and behold all the key people came to the meeting, which of course raised a bunch of additional issues for all the key people to start working on, and since I'm the production coordinator, each key person's problem is, at least indirectly, my problem.

I'm still without a bike, and wouldn't you know, now the truck is running rough, misfiring in low gear like it suddenly needs a tuneup, when two days ago it was running fine. Normally I would drop the truck at the shop in the morning, ride my bike to work, and pick up the truck after work, but no. So I called the trusted mechanic, and he suggested I try a can of Sea Foam motor treatment, which I picked up for nine dollars and poured in the gas tank in the hope that this stuff will clean up the fuel injectors until I can get a real tuneup.

Sometimes it's the little loose ends left hanging that are most annoying. Not that each question isn't important in its own way, but the plethora of unresolved issues was clouding my thinking. Just make a decision, okay? Yes, I will schedule a new Saturday morning class this fall on the Westside, and yes, I will continue to practice on Thursdays in the park even if no one shows up, and no, I will not make the switch to Wednesday nights when the old men's group changes to its new schedule.

I called my son and learned a lot about his new gig maintaining an event space in SoHo for Red Bull. Everybody in his house is moving out and finding new places to live, so he will likely have a new address come October. He commiserated on the loss of the bike.

I called my parents and heard about some of the adjustments they are making, such as cooking more for themselves instead of getting meals delivered. They're picking lots of tomatoes, and we compared notes on how our gardens are doing. They were delighted to hear that their grandson Max is getting married.

I met my friend John for a beer after work, and among other things we discovered that we had met 23 years ago when we were both in school. Neither of us remembered the other when we reconnected on a church committee a couple of years ago, or when he gave me a can of Fix-a-Flat when I had tire trouble, or when he and his daughter took my taiji class, but we had been in another taiji class together in 1987, and I had the class roster to prove it.

Finally, at the end of the week, I couldn't stand it any more, so I found a pretty good bike on Craig's List and paid the man cash on the barrelhead for a black Schwinn. It's not as jazzy as the dark green Trek; it has wider tires and narrower handlebars, but I'll get used to it, and at least I can ride again.