There’s a great scene in Happy Gilmore – well, there are a lot great scenes, but I should say there is a great scene that also applies to the following story. It happens near the end of the movie. Happy is walking down the fairway on the first hole of the last round when a rival’s accomplice drives onto the course and runs Happy over. A doctor comes out, examines Happy, and announces that his day is over. Happy gets up, says something intelligent along the lines of ‘the hell with that’, and stomps off to play more golf. The doctor throws his hands up in the air and says “Fine, do whatever you like. What do I know? I’m only a doctor.”
I've understood exactly what the doctor is feeling a number of times in my life. One such moment happens anytime I give someone advice at the Hubway rack next to my apartment (and this happens more than you think, reader). This rack has an unusual bug – it often seems like a perfectly usable bike cannot be unlocked no matter how many times a customer inputs the correct code or swipes a membership key. My guess is that this bug is due to the slight incline that points the front wheel up into the rack, but such speculation is irrelevant at the moment. Over time, I learned to recognize that the telltale sign of this bug is a drawn-out gurgling sound that comes from the rack while the rider is waiting to take the bike. (Coincidentally, this sound isn't much unlike the one made by Happy's favorite mini-golf clown, but unfortunately the rack does not spit out a bike, a golf ball, or anything else of value.)
One day, I grew frustrated with this problem and slammed my hand against the bike seat while the rack was gurgling away. Lo and behold, this did the trick - the unlocked bike slid past my stinging hand and crashed into the curb. This method became even easier about a week later when I figured out that I could bounce the back wheel of the bike against the pavement as the bike gurgled and get the same result - now, I could unlock the bike without causing any immediate harm to my hand and, more importantly, advise others without forcing them to suffer any unnecessary pain.
Like any good doctor, I figured that since I knew the remedy, it was my duty to cure the world of its ignorance epidemic. I quickly learned, though, that most of my fellow riders took Happy Gilmore’s approach to medical advice. Over the summer and the fall, I encountered a countless number of mystified riders standing alongside healthy but gurgling bikes. I would then suggest the trick, sometimes bouncing my own bike to demonstrate the remedy, but the rider who would swallow my medicine was the rarest person indeed. As I biked away and left these stubborn folks to foot their pedestrian bill, I always wondered how many doctors there are in the world who consider getting their patients to take the pills as their biggest problem.
