For someone who has spent a large amount of their life playing with mechanical and electrical contraptions, I'm terrible when it comes to any sort of contraption that is transport related. (I suppose the clue really should have been when my car exploded on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but I was too distracted at the time for some reason).
Since moving to Freiburg, my mobility has been largely bike-dependent. I had the Frakencycle, which got stolen (again, wtf?), and since late 2007 I've had my nifty second bike. I like to think of it as "Son of Frankencycle" ... but that's just a blatant lie. It's a green-magenta monstrosity which has dodgy brakes, develops flat tires every couple of weeks and makes weird noises when I'm riding. That's ma gal.
Until recently, I'd just simply tolerated my bicycle's squeakings. I'd ignored bland jibs ("it sounds like a stork giving birth" to which the proper reply is "... You sound like a stork giving birth") but it's gotten to the point where, well, it's just damned embarrasing to be seen out in public with it. I got a friend of mine to help me with the brakes last week (I now have two again - hurrah!) but the sounds just keep on getting weirder. As I was walking home - yes, walking, after my bike was shreaking 50m after I started - I decided that I was going to have to fix it. Once and for all. Finito.
The problem however, is that I have no freakin' clue. I've never owned a bike before. I thought it was supposed to be pets and small children that were problematic and needed maintenance, not a freakin' two-wheeled chain-totin' bike. Give me back my suicidal goldfish, any day!
Despite my best efforts to be engineering and logical - I knew that it required some sort of oil based stuff and my bike (a good starting point, I thought) - the number of possibilities, especially when having to go and deal with it all in a foreign language, well, it was too much. As much as I hate the internet as a type of Manual for Living, I typed in "bike diagnosis" and came up with a couple of handy website related to "caring for your
I'm going to the bike shop tomorrow, and handing in my badge of Gadgetry immediately afterwards. Sigh.
Useful sites:
Bike Tutor: great site, lots of videos for the trickier stuff
How to ... maintain your bike. Duh.
2 comments:
All right, Jarv, what's your address? I'll FedEx you some chain oil and a no. 12 spanner.
We'll get through this--hang in there, buddy.
- Coops.
oh thankye thankye for support, coops (which, may I add, I read as "co-ops" the first time)
But all fixed. Degreased, regreased, less squeak. And I've found the real cause of the problem too. Not bad for 20mins work this morning ;)
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