JQR’s secret city

I know my current audience for bike-related news and tidbits is just
about zero, but bear with me here: last night while mounting a new
tire I blew out my old and broken-down wheel's rim. This has never
happened before to me. Pictures follow.

 More embarrassing perhaps was that I was on the phone at the time,
with a relative.

 Or is it more embarrassing that for the first time in five years (at
least) I have a bike-repair problem that has made the bike completely
unrideable? When I started riding, this would happen all the time, but
lately I've been able to ride to the shop for repairs, even the last
time the frame was cracked; I noticed the swaying motion and rode down
to the shop to mount the wheels and parts onto a new frame. So no loss
in ride time.

 Earlier in the weekend I had swapped out the front wheel for a new
one; the old wheel had been visibly worn down around the outside of
the rim where the brakes land. I hadn't noticed it so much on the rear
wheel, but I guess that one was about ready to go as well. The tire
had a large rent on the side, which had caused a puncture over the
weekend. Yesterday morning I had mitigated that problem by putting a
boot into the tire (nice piece of thick cotton fabric) to keep the
tube from exploding out the hole in the tire. It was OK except for a
rattle where the extra-fat part, with the boot, scraped the fender on
every revolution.

 The only saving grace is that of all possible days to take transit to
work, today is perhaps the best possible one; the Michael Jackson
memorial events will occlude my favorite parking spot during the day
today (Tuesday). Last week I was able to move my bike just before
folks started filing into the corral that included the parking meter
where I'd locked up the pony. Some lowlife, however, stole my bungee
cord from off the luggage rack at the second-choice parking spot.

   

Click here to download:

Bwanggg_Compressed_air_and_fre.zip (63 KB)

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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.)

     

Click here to download:

New_wrinkle_for_flat-tire_fix.zip (365 KB)

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Strong again! Mwah-ha-hah!! I went out for a late-morning run and with
that third-person eye one sometimes develops, saw myself careening
down the road, past the gorgeous helicopter taxiway and parking lot,
up the hill to the pyramid-like revetments and back, past the car wash
and the fire station and the stadium.
 
Is feeling strong just a conjunction of necessary conditions? I was
ready to go this morning, it wasn't too cold or too windy, there
wasn't too much traffic, I was paced by a pair of runners who stayed
four hundred meters ahead of me for the entire out stretch. I found
myself humming "What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor" at an absurdly
quick tempo as I turned around at the second revetment, then after the
final sprint up the hill between the lodging and refectory I rested a
moment on the dirt plain with my hands on my knees, with the sharp
taste of my saliva swirling in my mouth.
 
Photo depicts empty storage tanks at the secret-city scrap yard.
 

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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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