From the Archives - Bike Tour Journal Part II

Introduction

Twenty-eight years ago, my wife and I did a cross-country bike tour. As the journey unfolded, we kept friends and family apprised of our exploits via email. This digital correspondence wouldn’t seem remarkable today—I guess email is even considered old-fashioned now—but back then it was cutting edge. I carried a laptop in my bicycle pannier; it was roughly the size and weight of a big-city phone book (if you even remember those). The power supply alone was several pounds. The modem, which was external and attached via a 9-pin RS232 serial connector, was the size of a pack of cards and connected at 2400 baud, which is roughly 1/42,000th of the speed of my current Internet connection. I couldn’t email very often because most of the time we were camping. Even when we splurged on a motel, many of those fleabag places didn’t even have phone lines. When we stayed with friends or family, I had to time my CompuServe session carefully, as it took our hosts’ phone offline.

Recently I came across some email chronicles that somehow didn’t make it into my bike tour memoirs. (The first of these was written twenty-eight years ago to the day.) I’ve cherry-picked some of the more interesting passages to give you a little travelogue. Enjoy please enjoy.

(The photo below was snapped by Erin’s great-aunt; she wrote on the back of the print, “7-5-94 Erin & Dana waiting at Coop to weigh bikes & gear before going to Iowa.”)

Kansas – June 30, 1994

I had a good birthday: we went to the Barbed Wire museum in La Crosse, Kansas, which I’d really been looking forward to. (I wrote my high school research paper on barbed wire, which turns out to be a fascinating topic.) But when we got there the sign said “Post Rock Museum,” so we were confused. Turns out there are three museums in a row there: the Post Rock one, then a Historical Society museum, and then the Barbed Wire museum. This little old lady in the Post Rock museum was incredibly knowledgeable. “I’ve been here longer than the museum!” she quipped: and it was true, she’d been in La Crosse all her life and had taught in a 1-room schoolhouse there.

She knew all about post rock, which is the limestone they dug up from quarries to use as fence posts. There was a whole piece of quarry resurrected inside the museum (which was an old house). You could see the layers of soil, then rock. The crew would dig down through the limestone, which would be fairly soft since it hadn’t been exposed to the air. They’d drill holes, then tap in these rods just until they were about to split the rock, then stop and put in another one.  Once a whole row of these pins was put in, they’d tap the end pins extra hard, and the whole rock would split along the pins. Then they’d haul up this whole piece of limestone, and within twelve hours it’d be hard as, well, rock.

Then we went to the Barbed Wire museum, which had gobs of fascinating displays, but a very poor so-called guide who watched TV the entire time. That was a disappointment. The Historical Society museum, though, was amazing. Stuff in there from the 1700’s, and another little old lady who knew everything. This museum was built in an old Union Pacific depot that had been moved from a little town called Timkin, named after a ball bearing magnate who owned the land on which the depot was built. The depot, too, goes by the name Timkin. This little old lady worked there back when it was a depot, and she pointed to a bench and said, “I’m gonna have them move that over by the door, which is where it belongs.” They had a whole collection of ancient typewriters, some so old (1726, I believe) that the shift key hadn’t been invented, so it had two entire sets of keys, one set for uppercase and the other for lowercase. This museum had dozens of photo albums from the 1800’s and thereabouts, and old books and diaries, and old dental equipment, and clothes, nothing in any particular order but all of it absolutely fascinating. We hung out there until 4:30 in the afternoon when it closed, then finally hit the road. It was 106 degrees out there, the sun blazing, and we stopped 25 miles into the ride for Dairy Queen: my birthday treat.

By 9:30 p.m., when it was just getting dark, we were 50 miles outside of La Crosse in a little town called Caskill or something: I can’t remember the name and I don’t feel like digging out the map. We found a cop and he gave us permission to camp in the city park. There, Erin set to work on my birthday dinner, but it was not to be. The little fuel line gasket in our camp stove had given out, so the stove was worthless. So we had cold chili and cold canned corn—but good! These little kids wandered up, and it seems in a small town like that kids are allowed, probably even encouraged, to talk to adults. So they chatted with us until about 11:00, at which point a few of the parents who had heard the legend of our bike tour came out and talked for another hour.

The policeman we’d gone to for permission to camp had been driving by every so often to make sure we were okay, and at about midnight he came by and we talked until like 1 a.m. He manages a Rug Doctor franchise by day, and is a part time policeman (two weekends a month) for $5/hour, mainly as a community service to his town. He bought a house in that town for—get this—$6,000. No, I didn’t slip a decimal point there. Heck, Erin and I could’ve bought a house there with cash, on the spot, and lived there the rest of our days, supporting ourselves on a minimum-wage job!

Now we’re in Topeka, staying with Erin’s Great-aunt J— and Great-uncle V—. They’re a 60-something couple, retired (she from the phone company, he from the police force), in a very nice house they designed themselves on a couple of acres. They’ve got a pond and pasture land, a brand-new John Deere tractor, and a horse, and chickens and pigeons and even several hundred pet catfish. Uncle V— walks out to his pond every evening with a giant pail of pellet-style fish food, and yells “Here, fishy-fishy-fishy-fishEEE!” while rapping the side of the pail. Even though the pond is easily 200 feet from his front door, you can see the ripples where the fish are approaching. He strolls down there, and the fish converge. When he feeds them, you can see them all plain as day, their huge (4”) mouths wide open as they thrash about. We were sitting out there one evening after feeding the fish, and V—’s son J— (a policeman himself) said, “Look, dad, a snapping turtle.” To my amazement, V— whipped out a small handgun and fired at it. “Missed him, Dad. Too high,” said J—. “Yup,” said V—. Erin protested, horrified, and V— explained that the turtles eat the fish.

Speaking of eating, they feed us gobs here. At every meal my gut ends up ready to bust open. If I stop short of being stuffed, V— seems to sense it and says, “Nope, you better finish it up. No sense feeding it to Harley” (i.e., Harley Davidson, their Rottweiler). We’ve had pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, handmade egg noodles with chicken, bacon and eggs, a picnic, all-you-can-eat-fried-chicken, biscuits-&-gravy, a patty-melt, and ham with scalloped potatoes. J—, Erin’s great-aunt, is so happy: “Just like having our son at home again!” I can’t believe how much they feed me. I eat until I’m sure they’ll be exchanging glances and shaking their heads, making comments about tapeworms, trying to figure out how to get rid of me—but no, they don’t seem to think there’s anything strange or wrong about me eating 10,000 calories at a sitting. Since we had a late dinner tonight (with about twenty relatives visiting, invited over in our honor), our hosts insisted we have a big afternoon snack—so we got onion rings and ice cream at Dairy Queen. And they are absolutely refusing to let us leave before the 4th of July. So we’re here, living high on the hog, until then. I’m loving it, needless to say. Thing is, I’m eating so much I just can’t seem to stay awake between meals. I walk around in a stupor, yawning, my body working overtime to convert all that food to fat. I’ll look like Big Boy by the time we leave.

Kansas itself is really nice. Rolling hills are the rule out here—don’t let anybody tell you it’s flat. (Sure, it might seem flat when you drive along, but with our loaded bikes we feel every little rise.) Although our hosts say everything’s brown and dead right now, it’s greener than Colorado or California ever get. And they’ve got lightning bugs here (fireflies, by another name) that are just amazing to watch. I can’t get over them. Everybody here thinks I’m crazy for thinking they’re anything special.

Cracked rim – July 19, 1994

We have arrived at [my stepfather’s brother’s] place in Northfield, Minnesota. Earlier this evening they fed us a very spartan dinner: this strange casserole made with brown rice and veggies, and just a smattering of cheese on top. It was almost non-caloric. I asked for seconds and our hostess seemed taken aback, like I was some absolute glutton or something. For dessert they served the tiniest, most stingy portion of ice cream I’ve ever seen. When I channeled Oliver Twist and asked for more, she frowned and said she’d already put it away. In desperation I offered to fetch it myself, at which point she relented, but she seemed really put out. I hate to be an ingrate, but man, what’s wrong with these people?

After dinner it was still light enough out for me to check over my bike and troubleshoot a braking problem. One of the most common questions we get from locals along our route is, “Have you had any major mechanical failures?” This is asked with the same sort of enthusiasm you see in bike race spectators who watch from the most dangerous corner, hoping to see a good crash. So far, we haven’t had an exciting tale to tell—we’re on only our second pair of tires, with zero mechanical problems—but that just changed. It turns out my rear rim is imploding. Like a star collapsing on itself, it is trying to achieve a smaller diameter. The rim has huge cracks along the surface that the brake pads contact, and the metal is beginning to overlap there. At any time it could crush flat like an aluminum can.

Thanks to the time zone difference, I was able to reach my former boss at the bike shop in Berkeley and order a new rim. He’s FedExing it, to arrive tomorrow morning. I ordered a model of rim identical to the old one so I can use my old spokes (i.e., tape the new rim to the old one, and swing the spokes & nipples over), to avoid the nightmare of trying to buy the right length spokes from an old geezer in a small town bike shop. I know full well it’s unwise to lace up a new rim on old spokes; last time I did that, the wheel came apart on a fast descent during the Berkeley Hills road race, and someone yelled out, “Get away from him, HE’S GOIN’ DOWN!” But I’m not of the racer or bicycle mechanic mentality anymore. I’m a tourist now—I really ought to be fixing this thing with duct tape. Then I’d have more stories to give people goose bumps with.

Solo Joe Nobody – July 22, 1994

While riding along near Mondovi, Wisconsin we met the most amazing guy. He calls himself Solo Joe Nobody and has written (and self-published) a book, which we bought. His bike is loaded up to 150 pounds, so he’s the closest person I’ve come across to my state of lunacy. (I weighed my bike at a grain/feed lot, on the accurate scales, and it was 180 pounds.)

But this guy is different: his bike is loaded up like a homeless person loads his shopping cart—stuff just tied on, willy-nilly. He’s even got a portable stereo dangling precariously from the handlebars. All his equipment looks at least twenty years old. Hard to tell what kind of bike he’s on—it’s covered with the stickers advertising the bike shops he’s stopped in at. He has them from all over the country. He rides along smoking a pipe; even has a little leather holster for it. He wears mirrored sunglasses … for reasons I shall get to in a minute.

Within a minute of talking to this guy, we knew he was not your typical bicycle tourist. He’s a Vietnam vet and suffers from brain damage. After three years in the Navy, including a combat tour in ‘Nam, but while still on active duty back in the U.S., he was in a heinous car accident—forced off the road by an oncoming car in the wrong lane, he went off an 80-foot cliff. I could see the scar in his throat from the resulting tracheotomy. He was in a coma for two months and in the hospital for another thirteen. Because he was on active duty when it happened, he receives disability money and can eke out a living. The sad part is that he really can’t do anything productive because his left arm—indeed, the entire left side of his body—shakes visibly, all the time. In addition, one leg is now shorter than the other, and together with badly disrupted balance (related to his brain damage), he can’t walk right. He looks like a drunk, which alarms a lot of people. In fact, he’s been picked up many times by cops thinking he’s drunk; when they look in his eyes, they fear worse: for his eyes, since the accident, don’t work right. They roam totally independently of one another, each pointing off in a skew direction. So the cops often think he’s on drugs. His solution for avoiding public scorn and whatnot is to wear mirrored sunglasses, and not walk anywhere. Everywhere he goes is by bicycle. How he balances with all that load, given his balance problems, is beyond me, but he insists it’s easy.

Another strange idiosyncrasy of this fellow is that he swears like a sailor all the time. He apologized profusely, saying he couldn’t help it, “it’s left over from the Navy.” I wonder if it’s from the brain damage; remember Phineas Gage, that 1850s railroad worker who was tamping down explosives with a 4-foot long iron tamping rod, and the explosives exploded (as explosives tend to do), launching the rod through his head, and though he survived he began cussing all the time? Maybe when Solo Joe Nobody says he can’t help cussing, he literally can’t. (This is all my own speculation; I’m only 130 pages into his autobiography.) Anyhow, for whatever reason, he throws more profanities into his speech than anybody I have ever encountered, but is the nicest, most easygoing guy you could imagine. For somebody with his disabilities, or even for somebody bicycling into a headwind for thousands of miles (as he was doing, coming from east to west), we found him an amazingly upbeat and cheerful person. We spent an hour chatting with him.

He tours about half the year, every year, all over the country. He prefers the interstate highways, because they’re the flattest and most direct routes (never mind that he’s not trying to get anywhere in particular). He tours, amazingly enough, with only one chainring on his bike: the big one. I can’t imagine how he gets over the hills, nor why he would want to tour without low gearing. We asked him why he doesn’t prefer scenic routes like we do, and he said, “Aw, fuck, you can see all that shit in a library!” He uses a German-made Ciclomaster bike computer, because its display has enough decimal places to record tens of thousands of miles. Imagine breaking 10K on a single bike computer battery!

At the end of our conversation, Solo Joe said to me, “You know Dana, you and I have something in common. We both love your wife!” That was a good cue for Erin and me to wrap things up, shake Joe’s hand and bid him adieu, and get back out on the road.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume IV

Introduction

This is the fourth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, and Volume III is here. If I were a famous writer, these posts would comprise passages from previously unpublished letters or lectures that I’d bring out just to basically print my own money. But since I’m only a blogger, I’m providing similar such collections for free because I think they capture moments in time (in this case my latter college years) that I think are amusing and/or universal. All of these below are from letters written to a friend, in chronological order, and the setting is the Berkeley area.

October 1, 1990

I really like the old ladies in my apartment building. It’s an old, very elegant building in one of the best parts of Oakland, with radiators that hiss and click all the time because the landlord keeps it as warm as a sauna in all the units, for the old people. They spend most of the time indoors, since they’re really quite frail and possibly afraid of the cruel, harsh society outside. Their perception of reality is based on precious few data: if they only make it outside once a week, and happen to see something unpleasant, they may assume that’s what happens all the time.

Case in point: today I was on my bike cruising down College Ave toward home, and some old geezer pulled out of his driveway without looking. A redneck type in a big pickup truck had to slam on his brakes, and started cussing real loud. The old dude seemed unfazed, and after the truck got by, the old guy kept backing out, and almost clobbered a taxicab coming up the other way. I was almost sandwiched in the middle since I’d been trying to pass. So I started yelling, in vain of course because the old fellow probably forgot both his hearing aids, and as I escaped by hopping my bike up to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, one of my elderly neighbors was standing there watching the whole thing.

I was struck by her look of fear because until that moment, I myself hadn’t really perceived much danger (my foul language and evasive action having been entirely automatic). So she asked what happened, and I tried to play it down, but it’s obviously made a big impression. As we walked toward the building, she said, “My god, you could have been killed!” Since the front door into the building lobby is awfully heavy, I opened it for her, and she said, “Thank you! I was so close anyway but you’re really never safe until you’re home, you know?”

So I try to be as polite as possible to my neighbors, to help them live out their lives in a tranquil and pleasant fashion. This one old lady, Ruth, obviously loves having college age people around; she seems to hang out in the lobby a lot and strikes up conversations. Once I encountered her on the stairs while I was descending at about a hundred miles an hour, and she had to step quickly out of my way. I apologized and said “excuse me” and everything, and she said, “Don’t worry, I won’t mess with you,” but then, with a wink, added, “But if I were a few years younger, I sure would!”

Nov 2, 1990

I was trying to study Latin yesterday and it ultimately overloaded my brain. We’re having our second midterm Monday and I’m hoping not to eat shit like I did last time. We learn so much in there it’s not even funny. Well, we’re supposed to learn it, anyway. Recently the instructor said, “Okay, we’ve been going too slowly so now we have to speed up to catch up with the curriculum.” Yeah, right. We’ve already covered more in Latin 1 than I did in studying through French 6 at UC Santa Barbara.

Today the instructor gave us two entire pages of vocab and irregular verb formations (all tenses, and in both indicative and subjunctive) to memorize, along with three pages of exercises over this new structure. “This should only take you five minutes,” he says. Yeah, right … I’ve been at it two hours and I’m still not done. The other day we “learned” something even the instructor conceded was really difficult, and afterward he said, “You’re all very smart. It took me months to learn this.” I said, “And we get a day?” He replied, “Well, you’re Berkeley students.”

Dec 5, 1990

Thanksgiving with what’s left of my family was pretty fun, but I paid a price. On Saturday I drove straight through the night from Colorado to to Geoff’s place in San Luis Obispo and then had to take Greyhound back up to Oakland, and then I started on my research paper. This was at about 11:30 on Sunday night. I called my friend A— to see if she was still up; she was, as she’d just started on her paper too, for the same class. This paper was due the next day, and would be 80% of our grade … so this was pushing it even by our shameful standards.

I finished at about 8:00 the next morning, and rode to campus basically in a trance, after the back-to-back all-nighters. In class we broke into little discussion groups, and I fell asleep in mine, and I guess I must have started talking in my sleep because I woke up and everybody was laughing. This one girl was just shrieking with laughter and couldn’t be calmed down. The professor came over saying, “Hey, what’s going on here?” and everybody was laughing except me. I looked at the professor and shrugged: no, I have no idea what’s come over my group.

June 4, 1991

So this dipshit college kid comes into the bike shop with a broken front quick release skewer and asks how much for a new one. I tell him $9.95, and he rolls his eyes and asks if I think he can glue it back together. I tell him no fucking way, but he says he’ll try it anyway. I tell him to be careful since his front wheel is going to roll off, and that I’ll see him a little later. I should’ve clamped his head in the vise.

September 10, 1991

I’ve finally got my health back after a bad bout of strep throat. But I still have this one queer symptom: I can’t open my jaws more than an inch because of the residual swelling down there. So I’m eating a bit more slowly lately. Like I had to eat this roast beef sandwich the other day, at which point I could only open my mouth about a centimeter, which was kind of embarrassing. A friend had me over for lunch and it turns out she lives in a sorority house now, where all the meals are prepared for you, so all I had to choose from to eat was the roast beef sandwich or a salad (which, as you know, is ideal for rabbits but not guys like us). So I’m there dipping this roast beef sandwich in the “au jus” and kind of smashing it into my lips and sucking it through the gap. Real suave.

I just got home from class. I was sitting in there listening to the professor reading her notes, and it sounded something like this:

It is easy to see to what species of entities Ullmann’s description does apply. Certain entities exist the full meaning of which can be said to be equal to the totality of their sensory appearances. For an ideal perception, entirely devoid of complications resulting from the interference of the imagination, the meaning could only refer to a totality of sensory appearances.

This comes out in my notes something like this:

Ullmann has some sensory perception thing devoid of complications from imagination interfering with sensory oh fuck this shit.

November 25, 1991

I went for a mountain bike ride in the morning before work yesterday. I wanted to leave early enough to have time, upon my return, to shower, eat, et cetera, so I didn’t invite my roommate Eric along. You see, by the time he shaved, shat, pumped up, put on his clothes, and filed a report with the bureau, the morning would be gone. The only flaw in my solo attempt is that Eric always carries the spare tube, patch kit, pump, and other survivalist gear. They would have been handy today. Imagine that the ride is basically a loop, of diameter d. The bike shop is exactly d away from where I had what we in the research and development program call a “happy accident.” A rock placed by the powers that be in a strategic location began an experiment in Reduced Inflation and Pressure (RIP) of the front tire. This led me to some impromptu analysis of the handling characteristics of a standard mountain bicycle with a front tire having absolutely no inflation. On the standard dirt sections, I noticed a remarkable change in the tracking of the front wheel. It wasn’t until the single track, however, that I experienced the most dramatic ramifications of the Handling Enhancement Characteristic Kinesthesia (HECK), a sudden increase in the muscular toning of the upper body due to special bicycle control requirements. Especially on rocks and large branches, the new technology provided a Divergent Arrangement of Multiple Navigations (DAMN). Because the feel was so dramatically different, I found it necessary to actually reduce my speed, although I expect that a little practice will see the RIP being a great improvement. A thirty second shower saw me open the bike shop only ten minutes late this morning. Happily, and amazingly, my American-made Sun Metal rim sustained no damage whatsoever!

April 20, 1992

I got this Chinese fortune cookie fortune that said, “His heart was yours from the moment he met you.” How much happier I would be with that forecast if I were a chick. If I were superstitious I reckon I’d lose some sleep. The newer Square Wheel location on University Avenue, where I work about half the time, is next to a Chinese restaurant, and another fortune literally blew in the door. It read, “To you maybe too greatness, especially love adventures.” It’s the best fortune I’ve ever gotten. But so far it hasn’t come true.

I just love it when things are lost in translation. My mom bought this “Electronic Mosquito Repeller” mail-order, and it has the greatest instruction manual. I offer you this excerpt:

Mosquitoes frequently infect you place in Summer, especially at night, They are externely irritating as they disturbed our sleep and the most annoying of all is the difficulty in getting rid of the itch & soreness. After, ordinary mosquito increase or “Electrified Mosquito Killer” are used. However the odour is unbearable and the abuse of some of them may become dangerous. . . . According to the research of insect ecology, most of biting mosquitoes are female ones in spawning period. A Spawning female mosquito is very disgusted at the approaching of male mosquito. Therefore, the trequency of Repel It’ is made to imitate the sound signal of male mosquitoes to repell female mosquitoes away.

Under the heading “Applications” are six pictures of possible uses of the Mosquito Repeller. They are: Sleeping, Camping, Dating, Hunting, Livestock Farm, Farming. Where the manufacturer got these ideas is beyond me. Dating? I can’t get over that. Yeah, when I go on a date, my biggest concern is how to keep those damned mosquitoes away. The picture shows this young couple sitting on a park bench, with the guy in the process of putting his arm around the girl, about to bust a move. The Repeller is sitting on the bench with little cartoon lines to indicate its sound. My mom sent back the thing back because the noise was unbearable. I wish she’d given it to me instead, since I could have used it for my dating. Of course, if female humans are anything like mosquitoes, and become “very disgusted at the approaching of male,” I hardly think it would help.

October 8, 1992

I’ve got a midterm in my Milton class tomorrow. As far as I’m concerned, Milton is a zit on the face of English literature. (Here I’m paraphrasing Turgenev, who was referring to Dostoyevsky, another writer I’ll be reading at length this semester.) If you ever have to write a paper on Milton, you can start it off with that quote from me. Footnote it by saying, “Dana Albert, Letter of October 8 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 1.” Whether or not you note the Turgenev origin is between you and your god. But actually, it’s probably best not to malign Milton, because you can usually presume that a grad student who is a T.A. for a Milton course really likes him … so you better brown-nose a little bit. Here, for example, is the first paragraph to my last paper:

When I first approached Milton’s “Sonnet 7” I found it a confusing, ambiguous mess given to complicated phrasing, difficult metaphors, and pronouns without antecedents. However, on second analysis, I find Milton to be the dopest, flyest, O.G. pimp hustler gangster player hard core motherfucker who ever lived.

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From the Archives - My Front Derailleur Tragedy

Introduction

In some ways, 1995 was a tough year for me. After the beautiful freedom of the cross-country bike tour that had taken most of the previous year, I was hunkered down and working hard in a nowhere job at a consulting firm. During my recruitment with this company, knowing they’d smoke me right down to the filter if I let them, I insisted that I be eligible for overtime pay. Several of the workaholic engineers dragged me along with them into fifty-hour workweeks—and, being paid time-and-a-half while saving to buy a house, I was all too happy to oblige them. I managed very little work/life balance.

This meant, of course, that my racing bike was sorely neglected, in every way. I was riding only two or three days a week, and wasn’t taking the time to keep the poor bike tuned up. (It didn’t help that my 450-square-foot San Francisco apartment didn’t have anything like a garage, and though I still had a workbench whenever I needed one at the shop where I’d worked in college, that was across the Bay in Berkeley.) My body fared as badly as my bike. When I did ride, the sport felt like something I used to do. That’s the landscape for the sad tale that follows. (This was not a blog post, as those didn’t yet exist, but an excerpt from an email to my brother Geoff, on which I’d cc’d half a dozen friends).

My Front Der – May 11, 1995

I gotta tell you about my front der. (“Der” seems to be the new bike shop lingo for derailleur. I still prefer “mech,” which is what my favorite two Square Wheel colleagues, illegal immigrants from England, called them. Customers sure got confused.)

During a recent evening ride, I got a flat tire on the Golden Gate bridge. I wasn’t worried, for I had not only a patch kit, but a spare tube. Well, the spare tube had a damn hole in it so I opened up the patch kit. It hadn’t been used in well over a year (since before the big bike tour) and the glue had completely dried up. So I tried to flag down anybody passing by, and all these bikers with bulging seat bags just blew by, ignoring me completely, perhaps because of their fiendish concentration in fighting the wind that always blows around the bridge towers (where I had set up, for shelter from that wind). Finally a woman stopped, and admitted with embarrassment that she had all the tools I’d need, but hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do with them. I offered her a free lesson in exchange for a patch.

Well, I repaired the tube, no problem, and the Samaritan pedaled off into the sunset (almost literally), but then the damnedest thing happened. When I went to reassemble my bike, my chain had locked solid between the right crankarm and the chainring. Nothing I could do would free it. It was just stuck. At first I gingerly poked at it, not wanting to get my hands filthy (as my chain was in sorry shape—like Dad’s chain, with that ten-years accumulation of black oil and grit on it). Then I poked harder, pushed, pried, and eventually found myself ripping at the chain furiously, and somehow managed to severely lacerate my finger. Blood was absolutely spurting out of it—all over the ground, the chain, the crank, the pedals, everywhere.

Now I was truly furious, and started trying to roll the bike backwards to kind of roll the chain out. No dice—all I accomplished was to get blood and black grime on my handlebar tape and saddle. So I carefully tried to pedal the bike forward. Nothing. Blood shooting everywhere, hands a grotesque red-black color, my composure completely gone, I finally jammed my foot down on the pedal in a burst that I hoped would break the chain in two but at least end the stalemate. Well, the chain held fast, but my Shimano Dura-Ace FD-7403 (cutting edge!) front der somehow got snagged and was bent horrifically!

Now, this wasn’t just any derailleur. It was also kind of a trophy. You see, all the way back in 1989 I’d somehow broken [our brother] Bryan’s Dura-Ace front derailleur, and our boss at the shop assured me Shimano wouldn’t warranty it. I begged him to try (as lowlife mechanics like me weren’t really supposed to talk to the industry sales & service reps ourselves). He wasn’t interested, and in the meantime I had to buy Bryan a new der. But I always vowed I’d warranty the broken one and keep the replacement for myself. Finally I got around to it, years later when working at the Square Wheel, and thanks to my (nearly authentic) original sales receipt, I prevailed. (I had to fill out some form and describe the failure, and all I remember of my report was the conclusion, “I am incredulous.”) A beautiful spanking new 7403 front der was my prize. It’s the braze-on version, so compact they had to bend the logo around.

This was the most modern, sophisticated part of my entire bicycle, and now it was utterly ruined! And as if that weren’t bad enough, the bizarre mishap had also bent my derailleur braze-on all to hell! Now I was so enraged . . . words cannot describe it. I was like that guy in “Midnight Express,” rotting in the Turkish prison until he can’t take it anymore, who finally loses it and tears some dude’s throat out with his teeth. I grabbed that chain with my bare hands, and in a feat of strength matched only by Samson’s when he crashed down the coliseum around him, I broke that chain in two! So complete was my frenzy when I accomplished this that I continued the fluid motion, hurling that chain, discus-style, right over the railing of the bridge. I can only assume that in its trajectory downward it sliced off the arm of a fisherman in a small boat below. Needless to say this is by far the most irresponsible thing I have ever done.

Now before you condemn me for this brazenly stupid and highly illegal act, let me tell you I know exactly how illegal it is, from my job. We do risk management of offshore oil platforms and part of that is publishing all the safety regulations, which also delve into various oceanic legal realms like pollution, and on a slow day I’d read with fascination (okay, mild interest) how steep the penalties are depending on how close you are to land. Far enough out in the ocean, you can pretty much dump whatever you want, even an entire military helicopter, but if you’re caught dropping so much as a paper clip within sight of land, you’re practically pilloried. Well, what can I say? I’d completely lost my shit.

Did this awful act immediately come back to bite me? Did a Coast Guard cutter suddenly appear? Or did I face karmic payback, like my back suddenly going out? On the contrary, just as I set off toward home on my bike, flailing at the ground with one foot like a damn skateboarder to propel myself, two cyclists rolled up, assessed the situation, and offered to push me along. “You live in the city?” one asked. I said yeah. “What neighborhood?” I told him Russian Hill. “We’ll get you home. That’s on our way,” the guy declared. And they literally pushed me the whole way back!

When I got home, I violated all the rules of bike mechanics: 1) I worked when angry and frustrated; 2) I didn’t have enough light; and 3) I was so mad I couldn’t even remember the third rule, nor do I remember it now, so how could I have followed it? At stake was my pride and joy: the Ten Speed Drive Team Issue Guerciotti SLX. If I screwed up bad enough trying to straighten the derailleur hanger, the frame would be ruined.

On the plus side, Bonney was there to help me. Bonney is an old friend of mine: a giant, 12” croissant wrench, built in the USA to the stringent mechanical tolerances of a Lexus. Years before, at mile 95 of a century ride, I’d spotted Bonney lying on the road, and I was so tired I actually considered just leaving her there. I pondered the matter for a fraction of a second before turning back and swooping down to pick her up and carry her home, my trophy. She’s the pride and joy of my toolbox, which is impressive considering I have all kinds of Campagnolo tools, even the famous R-tool that straightens bent rear derailleur hangers. Alas, there is no purpose-built tool for straightening front derailleur braze-ons.

I had that dead Dura-Ace 7403 derailleur off in a jiffy, and then set about, hands still shaky with anger and drooling blood, to use Bonney the Wrench to straighten that braze-on. Almost sick to my stomach, I envisioned the braze-on snapping off, leaving a gaping hole in my frame. This horrific vision ended with a little window popping up in my brain—an instance of the saddest, most absolutely lugubrious computer error message ever, which I see from time to time when using my CompuServe Information Manager software: “Could not recover from failure.” Like the epiphany of a Generation X-er who dies of a drug overdose.

But instead, I came through. Anything I’d ever wanted to have and didn’t get was suddenly erased at that shining moment. Gone were the restrictions of original frame design; in a Zen moment I became the artist, hand-crafting that braze-on the way I myself would have wanted it in the first place, like the Platonic ideal of front der braze-on. You see, my frame—quite intelligently for a frame of its size, bless those wonderful Italian craftsmen—has a rather shallow seat tube angle, which makes for the perfect positioning for a tall person with a high femur-to-tibia ratio. Unfortunately, it makes for poor front shifting when the front derailleur braze-on is set parallel to the tube (which they all are, as far as I know). The front part of the derailleur cage is too far from the chainring teeth, you see. Well, I bent the braze-on to just the right orientation, a bit clockwise from where it had been originally, and though a bunch of paint flecked off, it was chromed underneath anyway.

I dug through my box of old bike crap looking for a replacement der, and found not one but two of them. How? Why? It’s like the old parts in that box copulate or something. Upon inspection I discovered both ders had something wrong with them, but between the two I cobbled together a working one. It was a grotesque low-end Campy number; I’d given up on that entire brand when the founder’s playboy son Valentino took over the business and created all the low-end lines like Victory and Triomphe. This cheap, ugly der was a disgrace to my beautiful bike, so to compensate I put on a spiffy new nickel-plated Dura-Ace chain that I was saving for my fiftieth wedding anniversary. When the repair was done and I’d cleaned most of the blood and grime from my hands, I went out for a test ride, and now my bike—she runs like a top. I don’t know if it’s the new derailleur braze-on angle or the Dura-Ace chain, but the Campy front der shifts great.

As for the mangled Dura-Ace 7403, it’s still beautiful, in its broken, tragic way. If you ever need spare parts from it, let me know. For now, it’s just another museum piece taking up space in our small apartment, without a jewel case or alarm system to protect it and show it off properly.

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A Cheap Bastard’s Guide to Inflating Tubeless Tires

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language, coarse humor, and mature themes.

Introduction

This post is about how—and why—to build a soda-bottle human-powered air compressor for inflating tubeless bicycle tires. For a few dollars you can create a non-electric equivalent of that giant, loud, coin-operated air compressor that you might use at a gas station.

I freely acknowledge that I did not invent the soda-bottle air compressor, nor am I the first to showcase it on the Internet. But I’ll give you a more thorough account than you’ll get elsewhere, which might a) prepare you for the kinds of difficulties you might encounter (since I encountered them all), and b) give you the opportunity to laugh at me. You’ll also get some safety tips.

Why build your own compressor?

My friend Peter (“Uncle Peter” to my kids) is like a superior version of me, except that he can’t be bothered to blog. He introduced me to the human powered air compressor concept, via an e-mail to John, Dan, and me, which included this photo:

Uncle Peter wrote, “I went riding with some jackass this summer and we were on a dirt road and he flatted twice thanks to pinch flats ... the humanity!” He was of course referring to me, and this ill-fated ride.

John and I were cycling teammates in 1981 and have been friends ever since. (He lives way far away and my kids couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, so he’s not yet an honorary uncle.) He replied to Uncle Peter’s e-mail: “So many questions… First, this looks like a home brewer’s still, not an air compressor. What are the details on this contraption? You can buy an actual air compressor for about $100 —why go this cheap route?”

It’s very tempting to take John to task for being a yuppie, not being resourceful, etc. but I would just sound bitter. Probably he was baiting me, and if so it worked—I’m a cheap bastard, allergic to throwing money at a problem. It’s not that $100 seems like a lot to me (though it does); any time I buy anything I feel a sense of defeat.

Meanwhile, there are non-fiscal reasons to make your own compressor. For one, electric compressors are loud and take up a lot of room in your garage, whereas you can throw the soda-bottle generator in the trunk of your car. (Perhaps John is reading this and thinking, “You can buy an actual portable gas-powered generator for about $400 to power your compressor with—why go this cheap route?”) Dan replied, “I love the idea of pulling up to the pre-race parking lot extravaganza, where everyone is pretending to not be checking each other out, but that is exactly what is happening, and then pulling out this plastic bottle thing. You would automatically get a call-up at a Cross Crusade race I think.”

Now, regarding a portable non-electric solution, some reader is going to bring up CO2 cartridges so I’ll head him off at the pass. Yes, there are little disposable CO2 cartridges that many people use to seat tubeless tires. But I hate this solution. First of all, it can take several tries to seat a tire (especially a new one) which means potentially going through a lot of cartridges. Plus, we embrace how hard cycling is … why be wusses about it and clutter up landfills with these cartridges? And, they cost money.

Naturally that won’t be good enough for some of you, so I’ve done a little homework about another downside of CO2: it leaks out of your tires faster than air. Someone told me this has to do with the size of the molecules, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. In fact, as described here, the size of molecule isn’t important, but “the leakage rate of CO2 is huge, and the reason is that it is actually soluble in butyl rubber and is thus not constrained to normal permeation loss; it can transfer straight through the bulk rubber resulting in severe tire pressure loss.” This explanation, and the empirical tests confirming the theory, are corroborated here. But I wasn’t sure if this phenomenon applied equally to tires vs. tubes (i.e., to a tubeless setup) until I read this article. It not only gives the same explanation—“CO2 is actually soluble in butyl rubber—it essentially melts right through the material without having to wait for permeation”—but the writer tested CO2 vs. air on tubeless car tires. Despite the thick rubber, the difference in leakage rates was demonstrable.

Which leaves the final alternative to this soda-bottle compressor: one of these fancy new tubeless-specific floor pumps with an extra chamber that compresses the air in advance. (That is, it does the same thing as this soda-bottle compressor but without being kludgy.) What’s wrong with this approach? Well, this pump and this one are butt-ugly. They’re also really expensive—even more so than a compressor. And this (also expensive) Lezyne pump looks really nice, but I already have five Lezyne frame pumps and two Lezyne floor pumps and don’t want another. My most recent Lezyne purchase was a high-volume pump that supposedly can seat a tubeless tire. It cannot. And, after the first time I used it on a Schrader valve, its over-designed chuck—which is supposed to work on either Presta or Schrader—doesn’t work at all, on anything. Don’t get me wrong, Lezyne pumps are really nice, when they don’t suck like this. I’m almost as bitter about this pump as my wife is. (She doesn’t know a pump chuck from a hole in the ground, but she can count, and I have more than ten bike pumps in all—she wouldn’t stand for another.)

A final note on these pumps. The marketing people must think they’re pretty clever with the naming:  “Flash Charger,” “Pressure Over Drive,” “JoeBlow Booster.” You know what, guys? If you wanna get really edgy, I dare you to name your next pump “Blow Job.” I double-dog dare ya.

How does this homemade thing work?

I’ll answer both interpretations of this question: 1) what is the method for building and using this contraption, and 2) how well does it work?

Even after the basic justification for this compressor was supplied, John replied, “But I still don’t understand—is there water in the bottle? Or do you just fill the bottle with air (using a standard pump) and then connect that piece of fish tank pump tubing to the valve on your wheel? For some reason I’m thinking there would be some water in the bottle, but I’m not sure why (the incompressibility of water would help for some reason…? Boy my physics knowledge and intuition has totally atrophied…).” Before you malign my friend, consider that he has a Ph.D. in geophysics from UC Berkeley. But that didn’t stop me from ribbing him: “No, there is no water! Stop trying to turn everything into a bong!” (This is an inside joke: John, Dan, Uncle Peter, and I are among the seemingly rapidly collapsing minority who don’t smoke weed.)

Dan chimed in, “I was looking at that contraption and thinking that you were making moonshine on the weekends! Cheers to that. But you burst my bubble of mirth and raised my curiosity. How did you seal the valve to the plastic bottle? Caulking?”

The answer is, you drill two 5-millimeter holes in the bottle’s screw-top cap, far enough apart that they don’t touch but close enough together that they don’t touch the edge of the cap. You take a couple of old Presta tubes, cut off all the rubber around the valve, shove them through the holes, and then screw down some valve rings really tight with a pair of needle-nose pliers. (For an invaluable discussion of valve rings, and bicycle inner tubes in general, click here.) Thankfully, no caulking is required.

The next step is to remove the valve core from one of the valves. Do this with the little plastic wrench that came with your tubeless tire valves, or with some needle-nose pliers. Now, a quick aside: you don’t need the full tubeless kit that comes with the fancy rim tape. Just buy the tubeless valves, a bottle of Stan’s NoTube tire sealant (or “jizz” in the vernacular), and some Gorilla tape. (Is there a better product than Stan’s? I don’t know and I don’t care.)

You’ll also need a spray bottle full of a water/dish soap solution. And you’ll need some extra Gorilla tape (or duct tape), a 2-liter soda bottle, a pair of vice grips (or some other crimping device), and of course a floor pump. Finally, you’ll need a foot or two of surgical tubing. (What diameter? I asked Uncle Peter what he used and he said, “I think it was 4mm. About the size of your dick.” Nota bene: 4mm is the inside diameter. Of the tubing.)

Okay, because you’ve been so patient with all this text, here’s a pretty picture.

As I’ll get to later, you should eschew the 1-liter bottle shown above and go with a 2-liter Schweppes bottle.

Next, you shove one end of the tubing down over the valve that has the core removed.

The tubing should be a jolly tight fit over the valve. You could use electrical tape to secure it, but don’t bother. First of all, it’s extra work. Second, I have discovered that under sufficient pressure, the tubing will pop off, but this isn’t a bad thing. Think of it like a fuse: if the tubing pops off, the bottle won’t explode. And you really don’t want the bottle to explode. That would be very loud, and possibly dangerous. That’s why you wrap the bottle in duct tape or (ideally) Gorilla tape.

How likely is an explosion, assuming the tubing doesn’t pop off the valve? The good news is, these bottles can take a lot of pressure. I saved you the effort of researching this by finding this video showing how much pressure various bottles can take before exploding. Most 2-liter bottles can handle 150 PSI. The Schweppes bottle doesn’t explode at all; rather, it splits a seam and the air hisses out harmlessly at 140 PSI. That’s the bottle you want!

Fortunately, with a 2-liter bottle you’ll only need about 60 PSI to inflate a brand-new tubeless mountain bike tire, so the explosion risk is quite low. That said, you should absolutely wear safety goggles just in case.

To get a new tire ready to be seated, you should mount it to the rim with an inner tube inside, pump that bad boy up good and hard (the maximum the tire is rated for), and leave it overnight. Then, remove the tire and tube, remove the old rim strip, and tape up the rim with your expensive fancy-pants purpose-built rim tape or the Gorilla tape. If using Gorilla tape, you’ll have to cut so it’s the perfect width for your rim. Use a safety razor blade or a utility knife. If you don’t cut the tape just right, or if you use the wrong width purpose-built tape, then you are not a good person and should take up some other sport, like golf. (That is, you won’t have a perfect seal.)

Then, install your tubeless-style valve but don’t tighten the ring down very tight just yet. Mount the tire to the rim (without the tube, duh), leaving one section open. Pour in the jizz (whatever amount the bottle says—I think it’s 2 ounces?), then seat the rest of the tire. Hang the wheel from something, like your bike stand. Now spray soapy water all around the bead on both sides. This will help the tire bead seat. That’s the name of the game here: that bead has to make an airtight seal all the way around. What makes new tires such a bitch to mount is that they are shipped all folded up, and those creases create giant gaps where air leaks through like a sieve.

(Now, if this all sounds like a total pain in the ass, consider that most of the hassle here isn’t specific to using a homemade human-powered compressor. Tubeless is inherently kind of a hassle, but then so is puncturing during a ride. Obviously it’s worth the trouble or we wouldn’t be here.)

Okay, so this is where it all comes together. You shove the other end of the surgical tubing over the valve stuck in your rim. You pinch the tubing closed with your vice grips, some inches from the valve. And you attach your pump chuck to the valve on your compressor that has the valve core intact.

And—don’t skip this step!—you put on your safety goggles. Here’s the whole setup in one photo:

Then you whale on that floor pump like there’s no tomorrow. Pump the soda bottle up to about 60 PSI, maybe 70 if it’s a really fat tire. Then release the vice grips and—whoosh!—all that air flows in with a quickness, and if you’re lucky, the tire will seat, making this glorious popping sound, and you’re good to go.

Now … did this work for me? No. My first three tries were dismal failures. Look at that photo above: what mistakes can you see, right off the bat? Well, first of all, I used the one-liter bottle that Uncle Peter sent me. (He built my compressor. There. I said it. I was tempted to leave that kind of vague, so you might think I made my own, and frankly I’d planned on making one, but before I got around to it, Uncle Peter mailed me one he made. This astonished me. He hates going to the post office. When I left my helmet in his car once, it took him like 8 months to get it to me.)

For a road tire, whose pressure is higher but whose volume is way lower, a one-liter bottle is probably fine. It also worked great when I removed and re-seated a used mountain bike tire. But it’s not enough air volume to mount a new mountain bike tire. Don’t even waste your time. Just buy a two-liter bottle to begin with.

What else did I do wrong? The wheel wasn’t hanging from anything. The deformation of the tire, where it touched the ground, surely hurt my cause. Man, what a waste of time and spirit. I had my daughter making a video of all three efforts, which wasted her time too, and surely eroded her respect for me (a precious, rare resource). A neighbor friend even happened by to witness my disgrace. Damn. I called Uncle Peter and he pointed out all the mistakes I’d made. “Man, you’re the worst student I’ve ever had!” he jeered.

So, I headed to the grocery, bought a 2-liter bottle (alas, I hadn’t seen the video and didn’t know Schweppes was the ticket), drank a glass of (grossly cloying) ginger ale and dumped out the rest, taped up the bottle, hung the wheel from my Park stand, summoned my camera operator, and tried again.

This time it didn’t work at all. Something was horribly wrong. Finally it hit me: I’d forgotten the vice grips. I wasn’t compressing anything. Easily solved. I clamped those bad boys down and tried again.

This time the tire came a lot closer to seating—it actually got some shape to it—but alas, the flow of air wasn’t quite fast enough and found a way to leak out. For a terrifying moment I battled despair and was on the verge of rending my garments, gnashing my terrible teeth, and roaring my terrible roar—but my daughter was there filming. So I confined the profanities to my interior monologue and made one final tweak to my setup: I removed the valve core from the valve installed in the rim. This would, I hoped, speed the flow of air into the tire.

Did it work then? Well, check out this video!

Yeah, baby! It’s not the greatest camera angle, and you can’t hear the bead popping in, but that’s for safety’s sake. I had my daughter stand way back and use the camera zoom, because I only have one pair of safety goggles. Suffice to say, this time the compressor worked like a champ! Alas, when I pulled the tubing off, the air rushed out fast enough that the tire unseated. So I had to inflate it one more time, and this time I was ready with my thumb when I pulled the tubing off. I managed to get the valve core back in without the tire unseating, and my long ordeal was finally over.

Now, I’ll give you one final word of advice. Once you’ve got the tire seated, you shouldn’t just leave it. You should put the regular pump on there and inflate the tire to its maximum rated pressure. Then tighten down that valve ring (you left it loose before in case the base of the valve fought with a tire bead). Then you need to give the wheel a good spin, and shake it back and forth (like you are trying to bop yourself alternately on the forehead and then the belly with the tire), moving your hands from place to place. Here is a good video of that process. Then bounce the wheel on the ground a whole bunch of times. Then set it horizontally across a trash can for a few minutes before flipping it over. This sloshes the Stan’s jizz around in there so it coats the whole inside of the tire.

But even if you do all that, you still might not be done. The first time I installed tubeless, I did all that, and even bounced my wheels on the ground for several blocks while walking home from the auto repair shop. Everything seemed fine, even the next morning, but by afternoon when I wanted to ride, one tire had lost its pressure and puked jizz all over the floor of my garage. So I highly recommend you go for a short ride once your tire installation is complete, to spread the Stan’s around even more. If possible, take your camera operator with you on the ride, if he or she is your offspring, so you can justify the project to your spouse as “quality time.” If your offspring is shy about being photographed during this victory lap, snap an artsy photo like this one.

Epilogue

Is there an even better compressor out there? Well, consider this user comment to one of my blog posts:

Great device. I think he don’t feel tension who has a Kensun AC / DC Heavy Duty Air Compressor Tire Inflator Review. Because it is portable and anywhere we can carry this for pumping tire and best air compressor I have ever seen in market 

Note: I can’t vouch for Charles’s knowledge of compressors, or for Charles being an actual human.

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Ode on a Chain Lube

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mature themes and mild sensuality.

Introduction

I needed a blog topic.  My younger daughter said, “Write a poem about your favorite chain lube.”  My daughter is pretty sophisticated in that she didn’t say “oil.”  So I decided to take her idea and run with it.  If you like poetry, and in particular sonnets, you may not care how quotidian my topic is.  Conversely, even if you don’t care for poetry, you may find useful advice here.  If you hate poetry and bikes, click here.

The Poem

Ode on a Chain Lube

Some guys, they let their bike chain just go dry;

It’s nothing they will ever think about.                                   2

The chain then starts to squeak its plaintive cry;

These guys, like deadbeat husbands, tune it out.

Wet lube will make your chain, when clean, look nice;

Like lingerie you give a trophy wife.                                       6

It shuts things up—short term it will suffice—

But gradually devours your drivetrain’s life.

The trouble is, grit sticks to oily chains.

Imagine eating pie that’s full of sand!                                   10

That’s why wax lube—though certainly a pain—

Is what a high-end bicycle demands.

 Because I’m good to my beloved bike                               

 White Lightning “Clean Ride” lube is what I like.            14

Footnotes & Commentary   

Title:  Ode on

I think “Ode on” sounds much more literary than “Ode to,” as it hearkens back to Keats with his famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”  In researching this worthy literary source, I stumbled upon a poetic form Keats explored, ekphrasis, which involves a lavish verbal description of something concrete.  Intrigued, I delved further and discovered that the first example of ekphrasis in Keats, his poem “Ode To Psyche,” is based on the below sculpture, titled “Amor y Psyche.”

I find this sculpture alarming.  What the hell is wrong with Amor that, while making out with an attractive woman like Psyche, he is nevertheless completely flaccid?  And why does she tolerate this lack of enthusiasm?  It’s not like this guy is much of a catch to begin with; as the sculptor has plainly shown, Amor isn’t exactly Big Man on Campus.  I found this little research project so distracting, I decided I’d better abandon it, along with Keats, and just get on with my poem.

Line 1:  just go dry

Like Psyche, perhaps?

Line 3:  squeak its plaintive cry

If dry chains didn’t squeak, probably nobody would ever clean or lube them at all.  But they sure do squeak, and certain users of bikes (I cringe at calling them cyclists) actually do learn to ignore it.  I was biking with my older daughter’s high school mountain biking team recently, and one kid’s bone-dry chain was squeaking up a storm.  I seriously considered handling this in the way my teenaged biking buddies and I did back in the day:  by spraying his chain with water.  This actually shuts it up for like 15 or 20 minutes.  Then it squeaks even worse and you have to spray it again; by the end of the ride the chain is orange with rust.  In the event I decided not to do this; instead, I just increased the pace until the guy with the squeaking chain fell off the back and eventually out of earshot.

Line 5:  look nice

I will confess, when you get a chain super clean, and then give it a light coat of oil or some other slippery lube (such as Tri-Flow), it really does look great, catching the light like a precious stone.  (I suppose I should have worked this into the poem, though there’s only so much I can do.) 

Incidentally, speaking (albeit parenthetically) of Tri-Flow, here’s a bit of trivia:  when it first came out, it was called Tri-Flon, in reference to its containing Teflon.  Perhaps they were forced to change the name based on trademark violation, or maybe some big-wig just thought “Tri-Flow” sounded better.

Line 6:  lingerie you give a trophy wife

I’m not trying to be sexist here; just following up on the lame husband theme.  (Having worked at many bike shops, I can say that although most mechanics are male, females are also represented.)  The trophy wife notion is, I feel, a great way to convey the idea of non-sustainability.  Picture the recital of wedding vows of an old, bloated rich guy and his fresh, young, beautiful bride … at the words “as long as you both shall live” can’t you just hear people snickering?

Line 8:  devours

Are you thinking vagina dentata?  Good, good.

Line 9:  grit sticks to oily chains

This inescapable truth is almost universally ignored.  How often do you see a chain like one of these?

That first chain is dry and grit-encrusted from having been lubed wet and then neglected for a long time.  The second one looks to have been oiled more recently—i.e., it’s not been neglected per se—but look how much grit it’s picked up!  Disgusting.

So many people fall prey to the delusion that using a wet lube means they can skip servicing their bikes for 5, 6, 10, or 15 rides.  Yeah, wet lube lasts a long time, but the longer it’s on your chain the more damage it does.  Meanwhile, wet lube doesn’t just stick to your chain; it eventually coats all your cogs too, so stripping your chain isn’t enough.  You need to clean that gritty greasy crap from all your cogs too, and your chainrings.  Nobody has the patience to do this often enough.  And if anybody does, I pity him or her for all the time wasted cleaning off the grit that he or she attracted in the first place by putting oil on that chain.

What’s that?  You’re questioning whether a little grit ever hurt anything?  Stop for a second and think about what sandpaper is:  it’s grit, attached to paper!  Riding with a gritty chain is literally sanding away your drivetrain.  Cogs, chainrings, and chains would probably last longer with no lube at all than with a grit-trapping wet lube.

Line 10:  eating pie that’s full of sand

I’ve actually done this.  When my wife and I were living in San Francisco, pre-kids, we were out for a walk and, on a lark, stopped at a bakery and bought a slice of apple pie to go.  Descending a stone staircase, my wife spread her arms dramatically while announcing, “I need more pie in my life!”  Alas, she lost her grip on the pie, which went flying.  The Styrofoam clamshell busted open on the steps and the pie tumbled out.  I put it back in the clamshell and brought it home.  My wife refused to eat it, but I couldn’t stand to waste that pie.  The crunch of dirt and sand in my teeth was harrowing.  Perhaps this is why I’m so down on grit in my drivetrain.

Line 11:  though certainly a pain

Where wax lube is concerned,  you either swear by it or swear at it.  Some bike shops charge extra to service a drivetrain that’s been lubed with it.  The problem is, lots of bikers never strip off the old wax.  They just keep adding more, in adherence with the mythology that that’s all you need to do.  It’s not.  That stuff will build up until your derailleur pulleys look like an old bar of soap.  That said, at least wax buildup won’t shorten the life of your drivetrain.

To prevent this buildup, what you need to do is wet a rag with solvent (Coleman fuel is perfect) and drag it over the chain before adding the dry lube.  Periodically you should use a proper chain cleaning tool like this one and strip that chain completely.

The other problem with the wax lube is that you have to let it dry for several hours before riding your bike.  Lots of people aren’t organized enough for this.  Finally, this lube doesn’t last very long.  You have to apply it more often than a wet lube.

The plus side of a wax lube is that it doesn’t attract dirt or grit at all.  Check out this photo:  that’s my chain after a really muddy mountain bike ride.  (I hasten to point out that this was on a hard dirt trail that splashed up plenty of soupy mud but wasn’t that claylike mud that you make ruts in.  That is, I wasn’t causing erosion or otherwise hurting the trail.)  My jersey, shorts, helmet sunglasses, and face were totally mud-spattered, and look how much mud the front derailleur caught.  But look how (relatively) clean the chain is, especially compared to the earlier photos.

The chain is like the cleanest part of the bike!  That’s because as fast as grit is flung up at the chain, the wax flakes off and takes the grit with it.  Your cogs stay cleaner, too.

Not to beat you over the head with my analogy, but keeping your bike tuned up is a lot like being a good spouse.  Think about what you’re doing, stay on top of it, nip problems in the bud … very similar principles.  (Am I saying marriage is a pain?  No; just that it’s a lot of work, but also a pleasure when things run smoothly.)

It is true that a freshly tuned-up bike with a wax-lubed chain isn’t quite as pretty as one with a lightly oiled chain.  The dry wax lube has a dull, filmy look.  But you know what?  Life will go on.  And you won’t get black grease everywhere, like the rookie mark on your leg or chain prints on your car’s upholstery.  And your hands won’t get all black every time you tune up your bike.

Line 12:  high-end bicycle

What?  Only a high-end bicycle demands a dry lube?  Shouldn’t all bicycles get the same treatment?  Ideally, yes, but I don’t kid myself.  My commuter bike—though lubed with the same stuff my best bikes get—is never maintained as scrupulously.  This is okay because a) I don’t put nearly the same mileage on it, and b) the cogs and chain are not only beefier—i.e., more forgiving—but also much, much cheaper to replace.

Line 13:  beloved

Is it normal to love your bike?  I wouldn’t know … having been a biking fanatic for decades I’ve lost touch with what “normal” even means.  But I will say that if you don’t love your bike, that’s completely okay.  I don’t love my commuter bikes, for example.  I think you have to really suffer on your bike before you truly bond with it.  To paraphrase the Coen brothers, “There's a spirit of camaraderie that exists between [you and your racing bike], like you find only in combat maybe, or on a pro ball club in the heat of a pennant drive.”

Line 14:  White Lightning

No, I have not received any payment or free product from the White Lightning people.  (I believe that bloggers are legally required to disclose any such support.)  This is one of my few brand loyalties, and they earned it fair and square.

I hope that somebody comments below to the effect that I’m throwing my money away buying a mainstream wax lube when I could easily coat my chain with cheap paraffin or something.  There was a photo essay of this process in Bicycling magazine decades ago, and not only did it look really difficult (e.g., melting paraffin on a stove), but an irate reader wrote in a month or two later complaining that he’d given it a try and started a kitchen fire!  I will acknowledge that White Lightning isn’t cheap, and must be reapplied fairly often.  That said, it’s waaaay cheaper than chains, cassettes, and chainrings.  Take it from me … a cheap bastard from way back!

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