Avid cyclist and reader, Jonathan is no longer having adventures in his secret city. Instead he is spending the first couple weeks of his paid vacation back home in his native archipelago, New York City, with his girlfriend and three cats. Current distractions include listening to The Selecter, Trost, and Louis Jordan, among others.
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For my visual learners out there, here's a slideshow about
Presta-valve tubes. They come in differing stem lengths, and I usually
end up with many tubes on hand, all of the wrong length. Not an
insuperable obstacle, however; watch the slides for details.
I apologize in advance for the annoying camera strap that gets in
picture no. 3, but if you can ignore that, you can see the business
part just fine.
My new thing is to stick a safety pin gently into the puncture and
leave it there while I sand and spread the glue. That way I never lose
track of where the hole is. When I pull it out, I get a nice obvious
glue bubble too, which makes it easy to center the patch on the hole.
Picture no. 1 is the tube at the puncture site, picture no. 2 is me
cleaning out the inside of the tire with a rag (use a cloth rag that
will catch on anything stuck through the tire), picture no. 3 is the
safety pin in place.
In retrospect, I think I must have done a shoddy job of cleaning out
the inside of the tire, because I discovered another slow leak this
morning when I got back on the pony after my dentist visit. My gauge
told me it had gone from 100 psi to 60 psi in three hours, so I filled
it up again, went to the post office and to lunch, and then patched
the new hole in the siesta hour after lunch. (I would have
photographed that exercise except that I ran out of batteries after
this morning's series.)
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Jose gave me a hand with the chain tension this afternoon. I was
hoping to do it this morning, but I couldn't find my 15mm box wrench.
So I went down to the garage area and borrowed one of the mechanics'
wrenches. As I had the bike turned over, Jose says, "Let's do this
old-school," and goes to fetch a broomstick. After I loosen the wheel,
he wedges the broomstick between the bottom bracket and the rear
wheel, between the chain stays, so that it is both pushing the wheel
toward the rear and holding it in place. All that was left was to
tighten the axle nuts gently with the box end of the wrench,
alternating sides so the wheel doesn't get locked off-center.
Of course, some buttinsky walks over and warns us that if we push the
wheel back too far, it won't turn. Huh? Then he comments unfavorably
on my 700x23
tires, suggesting that they are a poor choice for riding on dirt.
I looked him in the eye, then gestured to the expansive pavement.
I rode back to the lodging sweetly, with the new tighter tension. I
had been a little worried that the chain would start to leap off the
sprockets like it had back about six weeks ago, right before I
tightened the tension last. No ride this afternoon, however, no
interest on my part in a rematch with Boreas. I went
running this morning in the light of the full moon before dawn and I
actually felt pretty energetic, and it even seemed as if the wind had
let up a bit.
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