Mess of a mess

Dublin

omg what a mess. Really. So I reassembled my bike at the airport. The front brake/wheel/something got misaligned in transit, and it just looked deformed. So the front wheel wouldn't roll smoothly. Then as I'm rolling the bike along on just the back wheel, I feel resistance there. I check the back brakes, and that one of the back brake was rubbing against the wheel, although at first I just sighed and just left it at that. I took a taxi to the place I was staying, because buses don't allow bikes. And apparently it's against the law for taxis to carry bikes as well. Liability for if the passenger gets hurt by the bicycle?! Anyway, so during the taxi ride, I was able to fix the back brake, because I realize there was a piece that was out of place. Then miraculously, when the taxi driver took the bike out of the van, the front wheel rolled incredibly smoothly, with no apparent problems with the brake. So strange. Maybe the misalignment of the back brake had something to do with the misalignment of the front brake?! Clearly I do not know bikes. So just when the brake problem is fixed (I hope), I then realize there's a problem with the gears!!! SIGH. Seriously. That should be able to be easily fixed, because it's similar to what's happened before, but I really didn't feel like dealing with it

So unfortunately, it wasn't the best first few hours in Dublin......