off-season bike maintenance

One of the requirements of the Anchor House Ride is that riders must turn in a mechanics checklist proving that someone has looked at the bike and made sure it's equal to the rigors of the ride (there's no such requirement of the riders). While I object to having to have someone else oversee my bike (it's a point of pride with me that I wrench my own ride), it turns out that the checklist is a good one for keeping up with maintenance. In the season when there's not much riding (such as today, when cold weather is comin' on, and it's raining fairly sternly - and there's a chance of show tonight), I plan to break the bike down to parts and do all the maintenance and upkeep that will keep it rolling during the year.

So today, I began. The tasks I took on today were pedals, cranks, and bottom bracket (the dingus in the frame that spins when you turn the pedals and cranks); the rear dérailleur ; and the saddle and post. Here's what I did and what I learned:

• The torque specification on the bottom bracket is fussy: too tight, and you can ruin the bracket (cheap) and/or the frame (NOT cheap), too loose and you get the most annoying clicking when you pedal (don't ask how I learned that). My torque wrench only registers in one direction... but I learned (when looking for something else) that the torque wrench can be disassembed and reassembled to register the other way. This is important because one side of most bottom brackets has reverse threads. My torque wrench is now marked so I know which way the torque registers.

I disassembled the cranks, took out the bottom bracket and looked inside. Some bottom brackets collect water and road mung, but this one was remarkably clean. I re-greased (black engine grease; see below) and re-assembled.
The rear dérailleur has two little follow-wheels around which the chain goes; they were filthy with grease and road junk. I cleaned them off, and then made almost every mistake one can make reassembling:

• There's an upper and a lower wheel. They have different-sized bolts for axles (which is obvious) and different sized washer bearings (which is not). The larger-holed washers will fit on the smaller bolt; the opposite is not true.
  
• The lower wheel has a directional marking, and it's not intuitive which way it goes;
  
• Nor is the chain routing intuitive. Luckily, the correction only requires removing the two axle bolts.
  
• Disassembling and reassembling the dérailleur affects the cable adjustment.
  

The key issue with the saddle is the seatpost. My bike's frame is titanium, which has a property of galling - sticking to itself or other metals under high friction, such as when tightening a bolt into a thread, or tightening a seatpost into a titanium seat tube. The best way, apparently, to avoid this is by the use of Ti-Prep (I've seen it referred to in industries other than bicycle manufacture as the best stuff for avoiding titanium galling). So the real purpose for this disassemble is to make sure that the seatpost still loosens. While I was there, I made sure the saddle was still at the correct height, and I greased all the bolts. (Greasing bolts is common in bicycle assembly, and there are a number of favorite concoctions to use. I use white grease most of the time, and beeswax when the bolt or screw in question will be somewhat loose, but should not move, such as a limit screw on a dérailleur.)
In the near future, I plan to do the following:

• Put on new brake shoes, and adjust the toe-in and fit of the brakes;
  
• Disassemble the headset/fork/handlebar assembly, and re-grease the bearings;
  
• Move the brake-shifter controls a little higher on the handlebars;
  
• Install a new cable guide under the bottom bracket.
  

All these things will affect the cables, so I'll wait until I'm ready to replace them, as well. Cable replacement usually requires additional adjustment(s) one to three days after the installation due to "cable stretch" (which is really housing shrinkage - that cable is steel; do you really think it will stretch under the pressures of bike brakes and derailleurs?), so I'll hold off until I don't plan to ride for a few days to do that. (However, I do the maintenance in the unheated garage. It stays above freezing in there... but sometimes not by much. So there's an incentive to do this stuff before there are icicles hangin' from the eaves.)

golden parachutes, silver spoons

Propaganda posters for the 1%. Originals at Visual News.

I hope we have the resolve to see this through.

...emia

I got a call this evening from my father. He's been told he has leukemia. He's scared.

I called my sister after the parents had had a chance to call her. By the time we spoke, she had called another family member who's a doctor; he said it might just be anemia. I suppose it's possible; Dad is supposed to go in for a transfusion on Monday, which sounds like a response to anemia.

Neither my sister nor I were as emotionally rocked by the news as we expected to be, and neither of us can understand why. We've promised to keep in touch with each other. I'm not good at that; I hope I can do it.

Dad will not go to the funeral next week; mother may not be able to. I'll go anyway; it's come to mean a lot to my mother that I go.

I'm hoping for good news. I'm expecting to be disappointed.

never thought of it this way until now

From Imgur via Oursignal, which means, of course, that I have no idea of the source.

more on copyright

In an earlier post, I brought up my disagreement with my father (an author) about copyright. C. G. P. Grey makes my argument more clearly than I can:

See more of his videos here.

after a recent death in the family

My mother’s sister, five years older than she, died yesterday.

Her memorial service will be scheduled in the next few weeks, and it may conflict with a birthday celebration the excellent wife is planning for herself. It’s a birthday-with-a-zero-at-the-end, so it has some import, but the number is higher than she likes to admit, so there’s some weirdness about the celebration (Edit 10/28/11: The excellent wife has informed me that her reluctance to have a large celebration for the occasion has solely to do with the amount of preparation & work involved, and not any feelings about age. I stand corrected.). The memorial service will take place several hundred miles away from Central Jersey, thus, it will be a major commitment in time to go. My wife and I had a disagreement last night about whether I should attend the memorial service if it’s on her birthday weekend. There are a number of factors to consider:

• I was never this aunt’s favorite person, nor was she mine. She tolerated my presence at family gatherings, but it seemed clear that there was a direct proportion between the quality of her life and my absence from it.
  
• My relationship with my own family of origin is not the stuff of 50’s sitcoms, either. We can be mannered, and even entertain one another, but there are long memories on both sides of damages done. Further, I have made reference to my psychological instabilities on this blog; I have not told my family of their intensity. My in-laws, on the other hand, have always appeared glad to see me, and it’s always easier for me to be with them (one factor is that they are a 45-minute-drive away, rather than the twelve-hour-drive to Dixie where my parents are now). As a result, there was a nickel’s worth of truth in my mother’s mouth when, years ago, she said, “I guess you have a new family now”.
  
• I missed the wedding of the daughter of a cousin when I did the Anchor House ride over the summer. I don’t think I’ve ever met the daughter, and I’ve not seen the cousin in decades. My mother was disappointed that I did not show up, and said that that was probably the last time the family would get together for a happy occasion; the implication being that the funerals would be starting after that. This memorial is the next occasion.
  
• I’ve long had a problem about being a disappointment to my parents. They say every time we speak on the phone that they are proud of me and that they are glad when I call. But they need to say it, because I don’t feel it. I will probably never know whether there was a real cause to this feeling of disappointment or not. I don’t want to disappoint my mother by not showing up.
  
• My parents are, of course, old enough to be my parents, and I’m pushing 60. My father has recently had an ailment that should have cleared up by now, and it hasn’t.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. Of course, if the memorial doesn’t interfere with the birthday, all of this angst will be for nothing. That doesn’t mean I can stop doing it.

Edit 10/26/11: The memorial will not conflict with the excellent wife's birthday do. I'm firming up my plans to go, which will depend on when I can get off from work.

cover of a cover of a song

This:



(original here)

is a cover of this:

I like the upper one better. I stumbled on it this morning, and liked it enough to find the other. The duo apparently go by the name of "Lulu and the Lampshades", and they only use their Facebook page; I'm closing mine now, so I won't link to Facebook for the next two weeks, at least, so the account deletion will go through (TMI?). The Lulu's remind me of Garfunkel and Oates, another female alt-music duet with a lighter- and darker-colored member, although that appears to be the only thing they have in common.

The videos are evidently both covers of a Mainer's Mountaineers song that I don't have time to try to find right now.

weekend of oct 22-23, 2011

Here's another one of those "weekend roundup" posts that I seem to be doing recently.

Yesterday was a 45-mile ride through the hills, led by Laura, Our Lady of Perpetual Headwinds. It was, of course, a beautiful ride, given the day, the time of year, and the places Laura chooses to ride; she had a friend along who's a recent transplant from The Left Coast (his wife's in a doctoral program in, I think, Columbia), and so we were showing off a number of the crystal sights to which we get to ride.

At the break, Laura referred to me as an "A-rider with a B attitude" (for the uninitiated, rides are classified by letter; A rides are hard and fast, B rides are more relaxed and conversational; D rides are for those who can barely stay upright on two wheels). She bases this, I think, on my practice of not pushing the pace faster than people want to go (even though I'm usually one of the fastest riders in the groups with whom I ride), on not dropping slower riders, and on looking out for the people in the back of the ride to make sure they aren't overstressed or having mechanical (or other) problems (a practice known as "sweeping" on group rides; I do it frequently, unasked, and I'm good at it). I think she gives me too much credit:

• First, I'm definitely not an A rider. I'm pretty sure I'm a B+ rider, but I've been dropped by enough faster people to know my limits.
  
• Second, while I do try to keep friendly when I ride, part of the reason I ride with the people I do is that I don't want to be in competition with other riders all the time. That's not because I'm not competitive. It's because I'm so competitive that I can't bear to be outdone. I'd rather ride more slowly overall, but go sprinting up hills and wait at the top (Hrmph! I make sure people know that I'm fast!) than ride with people who are more in my class, and be pressed to my limits more of the time.
  
• As for sweeping - it's a way to take on a leadership position without actually having to lead a ride (which I can't do, since I don't know the roads). A case can be made that even the sweeping is feeding my ego.

So while I'm grateful for her good wishes (and hope to maintain them), and while there may be some good that comes out of the way I ride, I'm sure that my motives are not all the purest!

Today's ride was south & east (mostly in the flats) out of Cranbury. At the start, another rider asked if I were the author of this blog - so now, apparently, I have four readers! I suspect he got here from Laura's blog; she's linked here. The monthly ride list of the Princeton Freewheelers lists a number of blogs and sites that are bicycle-related, and I've thought of submitting this one, but I haven't. It's true that a plurality of the verbiage I generate for this blog is bike-related. But it's also true that I spill a lot of metaphoric ink about such topics as:

1. Left-wing politics;
   
2. My relationship with the excellent wife, our dates, some of our disagreements, and other stuff;
   
3. Various things I find entertaining or intriguing; and
   
4. My barely-successful attempts to manage and compensate for my anxiety disorder and other psychological vulnerabilities.

Before I list this blog with the Freewheelers, I'd have to do a disclaimer page, and I don't think I have either the legal knowledge or the coding skills. And by the way - yes, two lovely autumn rides in two days and no photos. I don't do photos. You wanna see the lovely stuff? Come out and ride with us. I won't drop you; I don't drop anybody.

Edit: I don't drop anybody anymore; see the comments for my recent experience over this.

never wish away distance. never wish away time.

By the time I put up the bike for the winter, I'll have done about 4,000 miles this year. Bruce Webber, a reporter for the New York Times (and a guy of about my age), either has just completed, or is just about to complete, a ride of similar length, but more romance: a 4,100-mile ride across America, reprising a trip he had done 18 years ago. From the linked article:

Unlike my last trip, which I viewed, somewhat contradictorily, as both a young man’s errand and a farewell to youth, this one, at age 57, has been about my encroaching mortality, no doubt about it, and when I compare the two journeys I recognize in the current one the frailty of age. I’m slower. I’m less eager to ride long days and long hours and ride with the sun going down. I’m much more concerned about finding a place to stay and knowing early in the day where I’ll be spending the night.

His experience is not mine. In the past three years, I've gotten into the best shape I've ever been in my life. I was a cowardly young man, not given to adventure, and I'm not given to adventure now, although when my excellent wife drags me on a trip, I invariably have a good time.

His story, though, is stirring, and he speaks about giving time to the experience:

This time, while I won’t say that I won’t be ready for the trip to end when it does, I’m feeling the different pleasures of delayed gratification.

I’m feeling the pleasures of contrariness, too. Why is everyone trying to rush me?

People have been telling me that the tough part of my cross-country bicycle journey was behind me, or that I was almost finished, or that the rest would be easy — or some related sentiment — ever since I crossed the Continental Divide, and several friends and readers wrote to express the absurdly wrong idea that it was going to be all downhill from there. When I reached the Mississippi River at its source in northern Minnesota, a grocery clerk made sure to inform me that I was closer to the finish than the start. In Minneapolis, in Madison, Wis., and again in Chicago, the friends I met up with offered congratulations as if I were already taking a victory lap.

I was taken with his article. Go check it out.

the best compliment

While on the way back from Rutt's Hut after celebrating his birthday with us and his 20- and 24-year-old brothers, my newly 16-year-old nephew called my excellent wife and me, "the coolest un-cool people."

It's the best compliment I've gotten all year. I am giddy with pride and gratitude.

robin hood tax

The Robin Hood Tax will collect a small part of financial-institution-to-financial-institution transactions (such as that bundling and sale of mortgages that led to the 2008 financial collapse). These are huge transactions, and there are a huge number of 'em, so a small part of them is still a big number. They are assessed against corporate "persons", rather than flesh and blood ones. It's an idea I like a lot.

It's a UK idea for now; here's a quote from their site:

In a nutshell, the big idea behind the Robin Hood Tax is to generate billions of pounds – hopefully even hundreds of billions of pounds. That money will fight poverty in the UK and overseas. It will tackle climate change. And it will come from fairer taxation of the financial sector.

I don't support just giving cash to emerging nations; I can't find it now, but there is evidence that they do better with assistance with business opportunities than simple cash donations. But that's a quibble; the allocation of the funds received should not block the adoption of this great idea to raise funds for the common good.

Check 'em out.

(Whenever I see Bill Nighy, I think of him as that over-the-top aging rocker in Love Actually. It was a little jarring to see him in a dark suit.)

not much. you?

Slow weekend. Windy both days. Saturday I did the ride to Princeton Friends Meeting; about 15 miles. There's a big hill crest between here & Princeton, and a couple smaller ones, so doing it on the commuter bike is a bit of a challenge, and on Saturday there was a headwind all the way down; it took about 55 minutes to get there, and only a little over 40 to get back. If I'm going to ride to Meeting, I need to leave a bit over an hour to get there and settled. (And @ cute chick on the road bike, I'm sorry if I startled you when I passed, but my ego got in the way - you were on a road bike and in full riding kit, and I was in jeans & tee-shirt, and I just couldn't wait behind you anymore. "Hold your line" means keep riding straight, and "On your left" means that's where I'm gonna pass you. Don't give up riding - that was apparently a new setup you were on - and maybe you want to come out with the Freewheelers to get some companions and learn how to ride.)

Later, the excellent wife and I were going to go out to the Princeton Museum of Art to check out a Sargent that's on loan, but she went out to work a bit of overtime, and came home complaining of tiredness, so we went to Whole Foods (where they were having a free bone-density test - hers are in good shape), and then to Conte's Pizza. There are worse things to do.

Sunday, I went out with the Freewheelers. Larry G leads rides October through March when the weather cooperates (he limits to those months on the unassailable reasoning that other leaders all lead in the better weather). About 45 miles, to which I added about 10-11 by stopping for breakfast and riding in from there. Windy again, and the last bit of the ride, the four miles from the end point to the lot where I had parked, was directly into the wind, with open fields on either side of the road. There was nothing for it but to lean into the wind, put my head down, and pedal, pedal, pedal. A nap in the afternoon, and ensuing insomnia last night. Hrmph.

Today I'm off, and tired. I have a dentist appointment this afternoon; before that I expect to do some financial stuff (that I can't do online: gotta deposit a check at the bank and go to town to pay the property tax). I may bike for some of it, but excellent wife said rain earlier (despite the prediction), so... OTOH, that's why I put the fenders on the commuter bike. I'm also getting the tasties for some junk food; my favorite Dunkin' Donuts no longer has the apple fritter (neither, apparently, do any of the other ones, although when I could find 'em, they were best at my local DD), and I'm feelin' the loss. (If pornography is that which has no redeeming social value and appeals solely to the prurient interest, then that apple fritter is pornographic food; the apple jelly is in there, I'm sure, just to keep the deep-fried sugar and white flour company.)

So. Whaddya know?