Don't Show Off

You would think that I'd learned my lesson when I was in 6th grade and I was showing off on my skateboard in front of the girls and lost it.

Or maybe when I was a junior in high school and I was demonstrating how to disarm a knife-wielding psychopath and launched a pocketknife into the arm of the girl I had a crush on.

Or maybe in college when I was showing my buddies how I knew my way around a pack of cigarettes and ended up launching my lunch.

But no.

Tonight's bike hang was at our house and it was fun. Yet I couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to show off my new tubing bender. The plan was to bend up a 16" long oval.





Damnit to hell. Stupid shithead. Probably good that everyone was standing there or else I'd have punched myself in the face. Repeatedly.

I couldn't risk laying awake all night thinking about that abomination on my bench. It had to be fixed.



I can hardly wait til I'm 85 and I turn my head into mashed potatoes popping wheelies in my wheelchair for the chicks in my nursing home.

It's probably futile, but on the off chance that I can help even one person, I beg you. Please. Don't show off!

Rackufacture: Home-Made Tube Bender

I've been not real satisfied with the quality of my larger diameter 3/8" tubing bends. So 2 or 4 weeks ago, I can't really remember, I scraped together some parts and a loose plan. The rough idea was to try and use v-belt-type pulleys as bending dies and build a bender that would accommodate multiple pulleys so that I could do a variety of bend radii. At that point I was pretty sure I had no idea what I was doing and that the whole thing would be a colossal waste of time and money. But I've never been one to let practicality stand in my way, so I forged ahead.



I've been goofing with it, little by little, in my spare time. Here's the basic frame, that's intended to be clamped into a bench vise . . .



Here's the bending handle . . .



So long story short, I was able to put some time into the project this weekend and I finished it tonight and faced the moment of truth. For the record, I didn't really expect it to work. Reason being, I bought die-cast zinc pulleys. I was pretty sure that the bending pressure would bust the flanges off. But stronger pulleys are harder to find and way more expensive, so it made sense to start with the cheap ones, figure out if they would hold up, and go from there. Thing is, if they work, I can tool up for a variety of bend radii for not a lot of bucks.

Here's a series of pictures that I hope is fairly self-explanatory. If not, just holler.















I'll be damned. The equipment held up and the bend came out looking pretty good. It's a little assymetrical, not so much that you could tell with the naked eye. Most importantly, the flat spots at the start of the bend are gone. Pretty sure I can live with this. Wow. I actually built something that works. Far out.



Scary thing is, now that I have a tiny bit of confidence, I'll be putting together all kinds of crazy shit.

5 W's

Who: Alan Jacob, Mike Sirott, me, 16 other eager students, one
instructor
What: Traffic flagger certification class
When: Now
Where: SCC
Why: State law requires that bike race organizers have a certified
flagger on hand to train and organize volunteer flaggers.

Yup, every bit as fun as it looks.

And don't think that just because I'm blogging, I'm not paying
extremely close attention.

Creepy, Yet Exciting

When you're learning to build racks, you make a lotta mistakes. More specifically, you spew molten brass all the hell over the place. You fix your mistakes by filing them into dust. All good and well, but as usual, there are innocent victims. In this case, it's the files. Mine have been beat to shit, thanks to my inneptitude. Don't expect me to get all sentimental and guilty. If they can't stand the heat, they should get outta the kitchen. Anyway, obviously, it was time to spring for a coupla new files, which I did on my way home tonight.



Holy hell, they cut through steel like a stream of hot urine cuts through snow. (Or so I've heard.) I guess I'd gotten so used to my pukey old files that I'd forgotten how crazy much fun filing could be.

But there's something bigger going on here. I feel a certain connection to these new files. I can't explain it, but it's almost like we share the same name.

Carless Days

My re-focus on riding over the last several days has been the best kind of medicine for my soul and body. John and Joe took me out this morning and finished off anything that was left of my legs on the trails at Riverside and the South Hill bluff. I need some recovery, so tomorrow I'm off the bike, resting and eating. Not stupid eating, but whatever I want of good healthy stuff.

For a while, I've had this pretty serious obsessive thought about doing a 7-day car-free stint. Why 7 days? Because that means you could get through the routine of one whole week without relying on a car. My rules are no driving or riding in a car. Bikes and public transit are cool. I realize that for a lot of my harder-core bike friends, 7 carless days is childs play, but for me it's fairly epic and a worthy challenge.

So four days into my bike cleanse, I suddenly realize that I'm well on my way to seven carless days. Furthermore, my schedule looks good. There's challenges, but no real showstoppers. I tell Patty about it, and she's totally cool with biking where we need to go over the weekend. Unfortunately, something family-wise came up yesterday and I had to abort. No big deal, just wasn't supposed to happen right now. But I seriously can't wait to give it another go.

Even though I didn't do the week, I got into enough of a groove to re-remember some of the great things about getting out of your car and onto your bike:

- If you eat halfway reasonably, you can drop weight like crazy. You burn about 600 cal/hr riding, so 1-1/2 hrs of riding gives you almost 50% extra on a 2000 cal/day diet.

- I process mental shit like crazy when I ride. I dream up wild new ideas and put the day's problems to bed.

- The fears of what can happen in the dark and bad weather totally evaporate once you are actually on your bike. Once you start riding, you just go.

- If you can just get there, you will figure out a way to get home.

- Something interesting and memorable happens on *every ride*.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Instead, I'll be thinking about my next assault on the 7-day barrier, and hoping that you're getting out there on your bike, having the same kind of fun as me.

The Cleanse

The holistic food people have theirs. Juices of raw stuff are always involved.

Every religion has theirs. Think penance and fasting and self-denial.

By comparison, the bike cleanse is relaltively simple: You just shitcan your other priorities and go ride your bike. Which is exactly what I've been doing for the last four days.

Things got way out of hand, unbalanced . . . bike-related stuff was keeping me from riding. How stupid is that? Allow me. Really stupid. Sadly, it's not the first time and likely won't be the last.

For the time being, though, my alarm goes off at five. I do almost all my riding in the dark. My legs are tapped and I wobble when I walk. I tried to go out to the shop tonight, but my head won't do math. I'm kind of surprised I can do grammar. I've never been happier. Bikes rule. I have to go pass out now.

Too Cheap

On the tool quality continuum, we all dream of the high end. We are sure that only the finest hardware belongs in our toolboxes. Unfortunately, for most of us, financial realities most often dictate that we end up somewhere in the middle. Snap-On's the King, but Craftsman's a pretty sexy Queen. And sometimes, dire circumstances coupled with urgent need sends us to a certain company that rhymes with Arbor Phreight. Which is okay. We know that what we are getting ain't great, but it oughta be good enough for what we need. Until we can afford the real deal. But every now and then, we get blindsided with something that is such garbage that it doesn't belong on the face of the earth.

At times like these, we must take a stand.