Meet: my vehicle

It's been a good week for me and my bike. Before I got it, I decided that I'd be prepared to learn bicycle repair/maintenance; I wanted to get hands on and know my vehicle. Consider the bigger picture: bicycles are almost ubiquitous throughout suburban towns and cities. We grow up learning to ride one as a rite of passage. It's one of the simplest modes of transports, yet at the same time still so complicated. I feel that it'd be a good way to fully immerse myself in bicycle ownership by understanding how it works. It'd probably help if I needed to do some simple repair too; servicing doesn't come cheap. Anyway, as a part of my ambitious journey to reconcile myself bicycle things, this week I've had the chance to do some pulling apart and putting together of the bike.

1. Snapped spoke on the rear tyre. The breakage happened in the middle of the spoke and on the cassette side, and after doing some frantic googling, I figured out what needed to be done.

Before beginning, the bicycle is put onto the lowest gear, and the rear wheel removed. The low gear makes it easy to reattach the chain once you finish. To replace a spoke, you have to have access to both ends of it. A spoke snapped through the middle means pulling half the thread out through the rim of the wheel, and unhooking the other half from the hub. The rim side is easy enough. You have to remove the tyre, tube, and lastly the tape, to expose the back of the nipple holding the spoke in place. Make sure to not lose the nut off the tyre valve. The hub, on the other end... Depending on which side of the hub the spoke is attached to, you may have to remove the cassette. Mine broke on the cassette side.

The lug ring tool was needed for this one. With the QR taken off, the lug ring was exposed and the tool basically slipped over the cog. Loosen. Simple enough. There were 1 or 2 smaller cogs on top of the cassette (I can't recall exactly) that were also removed. Basically, markings indicated how to align them and you just have to remember the order that they stack in. Also take care to not lose them. Every now and then I'd worry that one of the parts would be misplaced, and then it'd follow with a frantic patting down of the ground around me to make sure everything was still there. The cassette should just slide off and that'll let you access the hub. Pull out the other half of broken spoke. Or in my case, unwind it from the hub because the spoke got completely destroyed.

The nipple connecting the rim half of the spoke was in tact. Usually, that's the part that breaks due to the tension of the spoke being screwed in, but my bike managed to outdo itself and wreck some other part. The nipple and spoke need to be separated, and because it was still in tact at the nipple, my spoke was easily unscrewed after a spray of lubricating oil.

Thread the new one through the hub, place the nipple back into the hole from the rim, and then connect the other end of the spoke to the nipple. Screw the two together. It should now be held in place, although not fully tightened. Replace everything. Cassette, lug ring, tape, tube, tyre, valve. Pull the derailleur back; wheel, QR, chain, gears. Now would be a good idea to mark the new spoke. Colourful tape, sharpie, anything. Give the wheel a spin. Since the tension of the wheel isn't quite right (with the spoke still relatively loose), it shouldn't spin absolutely straight. At this point, you need to grab the spoke wrench and give the new spoke a tighten. Flick it with your finger, and then flick one of the other spokes. It was a bit like tuning the guitar. Evening out the tension in the spokes (trueing) will mean that the spokes will sound at the same frequency, so flicking them should give the same pitch. I find that so enchanting. Seemingly simple machines turn out to be a world of complexity and design. That shit so cray. That was my Tuesday afternoon.

2. Brake cables
Just about an hour ago I attempted to tighten the cables on the rear brakes, since I found myself clasping at the handles way too tight before the pads would touch the rim. At the moment it's still a bit loose but at least I know how to fix them up. I think the problem remains because of my/Lily's lack of guns. We couldn't tug on the cables hard enough to get them as tight as I wanted, but for now they still work.

To tighten brake cables, unscrew the nut up on the front handles, just at the base. Terminology becomes a bit obscure here I have no idea what anything is called. Ok I just did a quick google and will be using a guide to help me type out this next part. The problem was that the yoke was too low. This meant that there was some slack in the cable, and that the handles had to be pressed even harder to make up for the slack and then begin to pull the brakes together. What I was trying to do was to reduce the slack by pulling the yoke up higher against the cable so that I'd need less power for a pull.

We just needed to loosen the bolt holding the cable and then pull it through so that the traverse cable would be taught. Unfortunately, neither Lily nor I had the guns for a task of this magnitude, so our flimsy pulling only meant that it was slightly tighter than before, if any. More work still needed in the future. On the brighter side, we both know what we need to do, and I gave the brake pads a tighten so everything is aligned and working fine-ish.

The more I understand it, the more I can appreciate my bike. This can apply to any kind of technology, and at this point my life is constantly surrounded by different kinds of technology yet I barely know how anything works. And I suppose that's the point I'm trying to drive home (not to mention that my current book is helping me realise it): being engaged and in control of my life, to me, means being able to understand the tools that you have around you. Ownership of material possessions is not a defeat or victory for the system or the individual, depending on where the power lies. Total understanding and knowledge of your things puts the power with you, rather than in the object. These thoughts are ready to run for miles, but I've got mountains of work to climb and I should tend to that for now.

Baby steps, I suppose.

Other bike shenanigans:
I pulled out the T key thing that came with my skate board and found out that the nut wrenches fit a couple of the ones on my bike, so that was pretty exciting. I lowered the saddle and now it's about 1000% more comfortable and my butt isn't too sore after a ride. The brake pads were tightened with the T thing as well. Oh, multipurpose tools, a newfound joy.

Also: Dom was too swole and somehow managed to kick the rear wheel completely off the frame when he had a go on the bike yesterday. Oh my goodness it was hilarious and I hope he wasn't embarrassed, I wasn't even mad.  We managed to reattach it, though trying to pull apart the seat posts was the biggest pain and I also had a bit of a worry because we had to slide the chain back onto the cassette, and well, I'm not too confident doing that yet. Persistence prevailed, and at the end our hands were tired and gross.  And then he turned down my offer to go get kebab.

For future ref:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg6s596PPRY
http://sheldonbrown.com/canti-trad.html