what i pedal, i wrench

"Marley was dead, to begin with."

I've been thinking too much about this post, and I don't really know how to begin it, and now it's probably going to be too long, too.

I can star it here: when I decided to go on the Anchor House Ride, I found out they have a requirement that riders must turn in a completed Mechanic's Checklist on their bikes. I had built my bike from parts, and it's a point of pride with me that I do my own maintenance... but I didn't want to be disqualified from the ride, so I had the work done (and reduced my personal contribution to the ride by the amount of the charge for the bike inspection). I still had some leftover crankiness about being forced to have someone else inspect my work (the only thing the mechanic fellow did was shorten my derailleur cables), so I went and had this hat made:

(The offending piece of headgear. In this style, 10/6)

I wear it mostly to cover my helmet hair on the way home from group rides, but I also wear it when I'm going to Philadelphia with the excellent wife so I can show off to the hipsters. I was wearing it recently in front of a couple of riders who know way more than I do about such things as differences in frame geometry and which manufacturer is offering which frame options this season. One asked what it meant, and I said that I do all my own maintenance.

WELL! This caused measurable consternation; one opined that he simply didn't have time for all that; he also said that he would be afraid of something letting go when he was rippin' along at 50mph. I shrugged, and thought I had let the whole incident go.

EXCEPT that I hadn't. I found myself thinking over and over about it. When I had my motorcycles, I did my own maintenance on them, except for an electrical problem I simply couldn't figure out (and believe me, I tried), and tire replacement, for which I didn't have the tools. I've fooled around with all my computers; I built from parts the one on which I'm typing this, and I've even been inside both my last laptop to attempt a repair, and my current netbook to upgrade the wireless connection. The only reason I don't work on my cars is that they've grown too complicated (so they're no fun). It would not occur to me to have a machine on which I was having as much fun as I do on the bike, and not tinker with it.

And still I couldn't let it go. And that's the reason I decided to go ahead and order the Sunlite Truing Stand.

Dag-nabbit, not only will I coninue to do my own maintenance, I'm going to boldly go where no few men have gone before: into the esoteric world of wheels. I've even obtained copies of both Jobst Brandt's The Bicycle Wheel (extra credit if someone can tell me how you pronounce that first name) and Gerd Schraner's Art of Wheelbuilding. I may have to buy some spokes and build a wheel, just to soothe my demons.
Now I feel like I need to defend my credibility a bit. In a post from last October, I wrote about some of the changes I was making on my hybrid to turn it into a city bike. Here's a studio shot for a "before" picture:

I've just finished adding the rear rack (after the new handlebars, which required new shifters and brake handles, and subsequent recabling, and...). Anyway, here's a picture of mine, taken this morning:

Drop handlebars, because I like that position better than the upright one (and it gets me out of the wind), although this bike is more relaxed than the road bike (getting the position right took a bit of tweaking). The new bars meant I needed new places to put the shifters. The frame doesn't have downtube bosses for shifters, so I went with bar-end shifters (got 'em from Velo Orange, good for odd or hard-to-find stuff). I know one rider with bar-end shifters on his RB-1 (hey, Joe!), and asked him for tips about cabling... and then, when I got the cheap cables, the housings were too short to take his advice (next time...). Because the brakes are "V-brakes", they require special controls (V-brakes need more cable travel than conventional road bike brakes), and I was able to find those at Rivendell Bikes (which specializes in hard-to-find stuff for retrogrouches and similar nutballs).
Here's a close-up of the front-end setup:

The careful eye will note the bell behind the bike computer.
A few rides in the wet provided a reminder that the risk of getting drenched on a bike is less the water from above than that from below, so I've installed fenders, and, after trying to ride and juggle a few purchases on the way home, I added a rear rack:

You can't see very well in any of the pictures, but because the wheels are 622/700mm diameter, the rack requires clamps on the seatstays; get them from Rivendell, as well.
That picture also shows the remains of the old Specialized BG2 saddle, that is nearly dead, and that I can't get anymore, probably because it's flexible so it doesn't fit some kind of standard that says it's gotta support riders up to 100kg (about 220 lbs.). Sigh. I've had to go with the Selle An-Atomica, to which I refuse to link again, because I'm not satisfied with the saddle (it required a LOT of modification), and because they refuse to allow resellers to discount. Their slogan is "Official Sponsor - the Happy Bottom Riding Club", but a web search for reviews shows a mix of people who love 'em and people who don't (although you don't find the people who don't in their blog), and Rivendell Bike doesn't sell them anymore (their comment about "success has been mixed" on that page refers, I'm sure, to the An-Atomicas).

C'mon, Specialized, bring back that BG2. I'll buy two of 'em.

And sorry for the embarrassing length of this post. But those two with the horror in their eyes when I said I did my own wrenching was just too much for me.