Deaf Dumb Mute

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no engineer.  I never took an engineering course, always sucked in physics, and have a generally tenuous grasp of basic mathematical concepts.  But I like figuring things out.  I'm a fan solving puzzles and an even bigger fan when they're of a more practical nature, like wrenching on cars and bikes.  Fixing simple things around the house, while still an annoyance, is tolerable if it requires some kind of critical thought process or mortal danger, preferably in the form of electrical shock or explosions.  At the very least, I'm a bit of a tinkerer.  My hands are always busy.  There's always a bike component or tool not far from wherever I am.

In Beijing, not only did I leave all my tinker toys at home, but I left my ability to effectively communicate with people about even the simplest repairs.  My vocabulary, while still growing, is mainly limited to things that I can eat, transportation back to my apartment when I'm drunk, and telling people I have no idea what I'm doing.  Before moving the Beijing, I had never been without the ability to discuss how a repair will be done.  Even if I didn't know how something was supposed to be fixed, I could always start a meaningful conversation with whoever was doing the work about.  At the very least I'd be able to gain something from these exchanges, be it step-by-step repair knowledge or simply an explanation of a mechanical concept (e.g. car engines make fire and vroom-vroom noises).  But things are a lot different now and I have to rely on point-and-gesture communication to get my point across, including when I ripped the handle off my washing machine this weekend.

In an attempt to be productive on a Saturday morning.  I got up a few minutes early to do laundry before joining the usual expat group ride.  The only caveat was that I needed to get my laundry (in this case bedsheets) out of the washer and drying before I left because the rides take up most of my day.  Leaving a set of sheets stewing and stinking in the washer was not an option I only owned one set (a testament to how much I hate shopping).  So when the load was finished washing, I go to grab the door's handle and give it a tug.  It doesn't budge and after a subsequent tug, the entire thing pops off into my hand.  Dammit.  I needed to leave.  Thoughts of saying screw it and sleeping in a sleeping bag that night were briefly considered.  "No! I'm not the same dirtbag used to be" I told myself despite knowing full well that I was.  So I opened up my tool roll (just kidding it is permanently open on my kitchen table), and went to town on the metal latch that was keeping me from my freshly washed sheets.  I tried prying it open with a screwdriver.  I tried grabbing the entire hook/latch mechanism with pliers.  I even tried disengaging the spring with some combination of pliers, multiple screwdrivers and brute force.  No dice.  That last thing I wanted to try was removing the pin/axle that the latch and spring were pivoting on.  Obviously, the person who designed such a crap handle knew so and made it possible to grab this axle and remove the entire latch assembly.  I stopped short of doing this only because of the damn language barrier.

Because I wouldn't be able to effectively explain my predicament and my remedy to the repairman when he came, I decided to leave the machine alone until he came.  That is, I left it in almost exactly the same condition it was when it broke, save for a few screwdriver gouges and evidence that I had been verbally abusive whilst trying to pry the machine open.  There was no way I'd be able to explain how or why I took the pieces apart, much less explain what caused the handle to break in the first place.  Later that day a maintenance guy came by my apartment and proceeded to give me a detailed explanation about how the crappy handle was a crappy handle and by yanking on the crappy handle it broke like the piece of crap it was.  He pointed to where the handle actually broke, a thin plastic loop that was responsible for lifting a small metal bar attached to the heavily-sprung latch.  He then proceeded to do the exact same steps that I had previously done prior to call him.  Finally, he pulled the latch axle/pivot out and removed the entire assembly, which mind you is the exact thing that I wanted to do.

I've become my own worst enemy.  Because of the language barrier, I've become a useless know-nothing who can't even order a simple plastic handle for his crap washing machine.  I can't even tell a repair man that he'll save time by not repeating the same exact steps that I did.  This is a problem because I don't think I'll ever be able to turn off my brain when it comes to fixing things.  I'm simply not content to let someone else do it for me.  Being mechanically self-sufficient has always been a big part of my life and the idea of having to rely on someone else rates at least a 12.5 on at 10-point scale of lameness (with 0 being "not lame" and 10 being "triathlete").  On the bright side, at least I'm not pissing people off like some supposed know-it-alls do at bike shops.  The guys that read too much repair literature or had to many engineering degrees (one degree is too many), always had a way of getting under my skin because they could only speak about fixing things on a theoretical level and all the theory in the world wouldn't make them any more capable of doing the repair.  And while I'm far from being one of "those guys," the guy I am right now is pretty worthless from a mechanical standpoint and I don't like that at all.

Hulking Out