The death of a clown

My clown died.

Yes, that is the sad truth.

This clown had happily served me and my bicycle for some months now, ever since I purchased him at my bicycle shop.

But now he died.



It happened this one fine morning when I cycled to work to attend a very early morning teleconference. About 10 blocks away from my office, I shifted the gear from 6 to 4, while standing static at the traffic light.
The bicycle made a really loud CLANG! noise as I tried to pedal, but there was no movement generated.

I looked down...

DAMN!

The chain had derailed itself and got dramatically stuck when I tried to wiggle it out.

Lucky for me, this all happened when I was still on top of a hill, the 10 blocks was not that hard to accomplish in 15 minutes without pedaling. And thank goodness for the early morning empty street and pedestrian walks.

Later that day one of my colleague offered to help me fix the bicycle. For ease of maneuvering, Shimo-chan turned the bicycle upside down. It took him about 30 minutes to fix the bike.
When it was done, he turned the bicycle into its upright position and then I looked at it and felt something didn't look quite right.
Mr. Clown... my Mr. Clown was looking all dented and black. Oh no, this didn't look good at all. I tired to honk it, no sound. Just a pathetic whispery 'beep'.
Only then I realized, when Shimo-chan turned the bicycle upside down, he didn't realize that we needed to detach the clown first. Instead, he remained on the bicycle and got violently squashed and murdered during the 30 minutes of service.

Maybe next I should get a sumo guy or something, he might be stronger to endure any bicycle repair violence.

Farewell, dear friend.