Today we will lead off with an update on the bike. You’ll recall from yesterday that I busted my rear wheel hub on Saturday. There I was, happy to be out of the wind, pedaling along when POP! wobble wobble wobble. The hub was what popped. Three spokes were displaced, which took the wheel out of round and caused the wobble wobble. And thus ended Saturday’s ride.
The bike shop is closed on Sundays and Mondays which brings us to today.
So, this morning I took the rear wheel to the bike shop.
Mike was just getting off the phone when I walked in. Someone had two flats and, thus, couldn’t ride today. I held up my wheel and he said, “What is this? The day of flats?”
No, no I said, I broke a —
“You busted a spoke!”
Nope, I said, pointing to the hub.
Like I’d go win with a tube.
He told me I should just get a new wheel. By the time we bought a hub and he installed everything and so on and so forth.
I told him my plans for the bike, and he said, that it should be a wheel.
Then he saw a crack in the wheel. So it was a matter of time. And a matter of timing. And maybe good luck.
And my good luck continued. He said he was ordering round things today.
He would not tell me how long this would take. I told him I had only part of my Saturday ride and none sense and I was afraid of going into withdrawal and he made a joke about fitness, and that was that.
So it’ll probably be a fortnight. Bike shops operate on their own schedule, and their suppliers are often in their own universe.
Usually this happens when I’m riding well. I could have several strong rides in a row, and then we have to travel somewhere, or work becomes the order of the day, I catch a cold, whatever. But this time, I’ve lately been riding poorly. If it means anything in the great cosmic scheme of bike riding, who knows. Probably not much, which may mean it matters a great deal.
Ehh, it’s supposed to rain the next few days, anyway. And I have a half-dozen indoor projects I’m looking forward to working on. So there’s plenty to do.
And so I went home, and continued slow-walking a project toward completion. On Friday I screwed two shelves together. It’s an MDF corner piece I bought second-hand. Two shelves, probably from the original owner’s kitchen or bathroom. It’s going in our garage, in a corner of the punch out. And it’ll hold bike helmets and shoes.
I decided to make French cleats to mount the shelves on two sides in that otherwise unused cabinet. Today, I made the cleats.
This involved pulling out the saw, running some extension cords and digging out the ol’ safety glasses. Then I had to choose the appropriate lumber, rip it to develop braces, and then crank the blade to 45 degrees.
I’ve never made French cleats before. They’re super simple. But, still, they’re new. Also, my table saw is an old rickety and cheap thing. But it did the job. I made one long cleat and then cut the pine down to size.
The odd thing about the garage is that the studs are about 2.4 miles apart from one another, and so I’ll make super long wall mounts. It turns out that I had just enough of the same wood for the project.
Now I just need wood screws that are the correct size. And since I am slow-walking this project, I’ll go pick those up later this week.
But, now, since I have done this radical thing of writing this in the middle of the day (it feels weird, and also good) and I have all of those other indoor projects, maybe I’ll go get started on one of those now.
