quality of life issues

Every punctured inner tube has a story. A history. A time and a place. An angry dispatcher on the phone, a late court filing, a late arrival to work, a long walk home in the rain. The  broken valves, the valve stems sheared off, the perforated rim strips, the naked spoke holes, the $5 bill tire boots, pinch flats, snake bites, gun shot blowouts, slow slow leaks too lazy to fix, roofing nails, broken glass, upholstery tacks, thorns, staples, bailing wire, thread bare tire bubbles and classic tuffy tire liner lacerations.

The dream is always the same…        …I’m riding to work on Lakeview Boulevard in the dark fog of 6 am and hearing, feeling, tasting the undulating hissing of a broken 40 bottle puncture. I raise my right hand to signal the team car but the team car never seems to arrive.

The 13 valves in the collection pictured here, represent a small portion of my personal flat tire history. All of them 700c presta tubes. Some were SBS just-over-whole-sale company subsidized tubes. Some were  full price Elliot-Bay-Bike-Shop-are-you-fucking-kidding-me $8.50 long valves. Some were borrowed. Some were pay backs. I know one of them made it across Iowa twice (RAGBRAI 2007 & 2008) with out a puncture, a Torelli tube made in France,  it was a valve core failure that finally killed it.  Most of them were ridden on the streets of Seattle for many many miles or maybe just a few, before they were decommissioned. Some were patched and returned to active duty immediately. None of them were from Jonny Sundt

Superstition and luck continue to play their parts. I don’t believe you can boy-scout your way out of each and every contingency.
 
They say they come in threes.

crown race installer
dead blow hammer
 
full face respirator
full time father

in through out door
I-5 corridor

visualize the rear triangle with a 26" disc-ready wheel 

Ask me about the stack height of an FSA Orbit MX headset

all in all there always all there is

all the way out of the halfway house

it's good to have friends with headset presses but who has a press that can accommodate the 24inch "headtube" on a cargo bike?  (Headset presses always seem to remind me of 33 John and his commentary on 28 Nate's skills as a car mechanic and how they compared to his skills as a bike mechanic and how the headset press should have been liberated from the Elliot Bay Messenger Company base by a bike messenger because 28 would just mushroom the shit out anything he tried to install in a bike because of his complete lack of finesse and bike experience.)  It's good to have friends that can talk you out of a hasty halfassing of the cups when you wanted a quick whack whacking  of them into your new frame with a block of wood and then they can talk you into a more controlled approach with a 30" piece of allthread and some washers. The copper pipe step-down fittings are a bonus idea I learned about on the http//world wide internet.

Let the record show the only carbon fiber component I own is a 5mm headset spacer (1-1/8” threadless you know) and although it is functional I prefer to view it as ceremonial, referential and a personal choice.

Steel bike philosophy continues.  

rewind replay relive     relieve

cut me into 96 sticky little rectangles
adhering to each and every corresponding spoke hole

make me a sandwich
between sequential slices from the loaf of consistency

acetone daydreams fade to black (but that’s too emo)

the canary is now out of the coal mine and

moving on

full speed ahead looking over my shoulder

when I say full speed ahead visualize FSA Metropolis handlebars and thoughtful functional design wrapped around a 31.8 clamp diameter

today was the day

riding upstream in slushy runoff rivers
rolling cross tires with no fenders
rocking cutoff dickies and cotton boxers

so        anyway

my work (t)here is done

we now join real life already in progress

when the swelling goes down

we’ll talk about a résumé

Bring me your poor, your tired, your 180mm rotor. Show me your contact patch, teach me about rolling resistance and tell me more about your 406 bsd 3.0” tire that at 40 psi can more than adequately load the load. When you have 36 spokes holding up a 20” wheel you can afford to bend a few. Which makes me wonder of the story behind this wheel that I found at Bikeworks. Was it tossed off the electric scooter moped bike like thing of a poor little rich boy who tweaked a couple spokes and then decided to buy a new one? Whatever the story it has a happy ending, ending up on the front end of my very own CETMA cargo bike that I‘m slowly piecing together as we speak. How often does one stumble upon a 20” disc brake ready front wheel with a pristine Kenda Kraze tire for the amazing low low price of less than a large pizza?

two tire tracks talking in the snow
the wave of the front wheel
undulating cresting troughing changing
frequency and amplitude
tuned in over and under
the solid base line laid down by the back wheel

all of it enclosed parenthetically
by two more parallel tracks
from a trailer toting a fresh keg of beer
pale ale souped up with hops and higher alcohol
to survive the long journey to India

two sets of tire tracks talking
speaking an unspoken language
after the fact at happy hour
two sets of twins drinking
around the round table on the back patio
under a propane heater in the snow

That’s Lane Kagay getting personal with the rear end of a CETMA cargo bike. A bike that he made by hand in Eugene and hand delivered to me in Seattle. More on this later and more on that too. Walking the walk this way.

Keep reaching for it. Feeling for it like an asspocket U-lock on a bumpy ride. Is it there?  It’s there. It’s been there the whole time. It will still be there next time you feel for it. It’s in the other pocket. It’s in the bottom of your bag, unused for years at a time, but it’s there if you need it, you just don’t want to use it, but you could if you wanted to. Has there ever been a situation that requires you to use it? You talk about it, why don’t you use it? Just give me a sign. A post to lock up to. It’s not there. It was never there to begin with. You lost it in high school.  You never had an asspocket U-lock.  Why do you keep feeling for one? Why do you feel bad about losing it, about not using it? It’s always the last place you look.

interpretation of a recurring dream

It’s not just the water. No need to talk about the weather. She’s the newest in new greener grass fence builder. A tenacious remote control hunter. A gap-tooth chonker. A single feather escapee floating free from the down comforter. An innate hard worker. No hourly wage clock milker. No sack of shit sandbagging gold bricker. Ninety-eighth percentile dimple knuckler. Unbelievably strong like her mother. Soon to be familiar with the chain ring bolt spanner.  Respectfully respecting a historic perspective on the crank arm extractor. Born and raised on the square taper. Comfortable with the Schrader valve adapter. Still suspicious and not so fond of the carbon fiber. Ready and willing to stand up and get out of the saddle and pedal harder.  A soon to be if ever so briefly a cargo bike passenger daughter. Along for the ride with her steel bike riding black coffee drinking father.  Hold the non dairy creamer. 

pledge at the $350,000 level
receive a tote bag

purchase 12 pumpkin eggnog lattes
receive the 13th free

walk a mile in someone else's shoes
receive a blister

take two placebos and
call me phamaceutical industry lobbyist
in the morning

if you are not happy with the results       repeat
expect something different
figure out  
you're never going to figure it out
all that misdirected energy         
barking up the wrong tree
do do doing it wrong
it's kinda catchy
as in contageous
post nasal drip drip drippy
residual residue
artifact
snot sleeve slug trail
whatevers handy
100% fine merino wool
dry clean only

CETMA cargo photo

it's a gritty, workmanlike performance

day in and day out

commuting by bicycle