Friday
oi cat enjoys experimenting with gravity & warming her loins on key boards. It is the latter activity that resulted in having to write Fridays intended blog post by hand.
The general jist of this.
Is this.
“My bike needs a bath so badly that I think I might have to put on the NEOS (water proof overshoes) and get the business done at the car wash tomorrow. The thing has been strong and fun to ride when out of tune. I ride it just about everyday and have been running the same tube since Gloucester this past season, *for fear that I’d break my flatless streak.* I haven’t replaced a cable, scrubbed a chain, overhauled a bearing or trued a wheel in as much time either. Not so proud of the neglect, but it happens pretty easily to bikes that are pressed into daily service. It’s not lack of reverence for the machine that it ends up assaulted so mercilessly: salt baths, grit, grime, pothotles, curbs, light poles, parking meters, u-locks, stuffed under busses, hit with mallets, rained on, snowed on, sweat on, that-was-a-dangerous-fart on. You always hurt the one you love. Anyway, once more I’ll push it into the breach before it gets its long due overhaul.
I may need to bathe as badly as the bike does after another 12 hour day of carefully picking up and putting down everything a person owns. Funny business picking up and carrying a household and dropping it off somewhere else. Nothing else as basic is as variable from day to day. People, locations, conversations and couch sizes are reset every morning you are scheduled. I guess that’s how the last two years of building a bike or part when a deposit is collected or an inspiration strikes and faithfully reporting to a job I can leave and come back to at a moment’s notice has passed so quickly.”
Saturday
Photos of the dual dread of a mechanical engineer in the limbo between being a mover and a bike building industrialist, a bike with its drivetrain on its last legs and a 3rd floor walk up in cambridge (land of the well read pack rat).
Sunday
Turns out my fear of mentioning the flatless streak was founded and ended up riding home on a puncture last night on my finally cleaned and lubed cross whip and ended up spending some of the day patching inner tubes while listening to the reports of revolution on the radio. Also heard this chilling poem that has been a rallying point of the new populist uprising.
Two of the patched tubes went toward reviving my track bike. Nothing to get you through the midwinter malaise like having a new machine to look forward to cruising on come spring.
Thing weighed in at 16.5 lbs without pedals as is, Oi Cat is 6.5.
