On Saturday
morning I skipped going to the food bank because I needed to start an essay.
Not that I did any of the work during the time that I would have been at the
food bank, but if I’d gone that would mean I’d write about it and that would
take time away from an essay that was barely started.
I could have gotten lots done from
the late morning to the early afternoon but unfortunately I had no choice but
to go to Bike Pirates. The locknut on my left crank arm had been loosening
whenever I rode and I was sure that a deeper problem was causing it.
I was the first one in front of the
shop and so I took advantage of the waiting time and read the first chapter of
Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald for 20th Century US
Literature class. The second person to arrive was a guy with an Australian
accent. The third one seemed to be his girlfriend, since she came up very close
to him and was physically affectionate. Her conversation seemed more dependent
on him though since she’d just come from the nearby consignment store and was
selling him on some clothing items she’d seen there. She also asked rather than
told him that she was going to back and look around. I hadn’t really looked at
her directly during that time but when I did it dawned on me that she was
probably the man’s 12 or 13 year old daughter, which turned out to be the case.
Melissa came out and said they’d be
opening soon but she was just getting their garbage bins that had been left out
front since Thursday night. She commented to me that it’s the only thing in
Parkdale that no one wants to steal. I told her that I’d seen them stolen. For
one thing they would be better for collecting bottles and cans than a shopping
cart.
At noon I clamped my velo to stand
number two. I showed my problem to Melissa and she insisted that it was just a
matter of replacing the lock nuts for both crank arms and getting them very
tight. She related to me that she’d once had a racing bike and needed to
tighten those nuts every single day for 21 years. I tightened the right side as
much as I could but then Melissa came along and showed she was a lot stronger
than me. She taught me the trick of putting the wrench just a bit short of
being parallel to the crank arm and then gripping the crank arm for leverage
while moving the wrench a little further. I used that technique on the left
side and then Melissa said she would try her feminine charms on t it, she
couldn’t get it to go any further.
She was also helping the father and
daughter at the next stand but at one point while he was indicating Melissa to
his daughter to get her to ask for something he committed the faux pas of referring
to Melissa as something like “that guy over there”. Melissa took issue with
being referred to as a guy and said so. A little later she said to the girl,
“Is that your father?” When she confirmed that he was, Melissa suggested that
she educate her dad about gender. After that she continued helping them as if
nothing had pissed her off.
Since it hadn’t taken more than a
few minutes to apparently fix my problem, Melissa advised me that since I was
already at a stand I might as well deal with any other bike issues that might
be on the back burner. I showed her that there was some give from side to side
on my back wheel, so she had me remove it and the cogset. While she was
adjusting the cones she noticed that my back tire, the one that Nick Cushing
had given me back in the spring, was now too worn out and I would start getting
flats if I kept on using it. She told me to go down in the basement and to look
for a replacement with measurements between 700 x 30 and 700 x 35. It didn’t
take me long to find one that was 700 x 35 with direction treads like the old
one. Melissa liked the tire and told me that it would serve me well once the
weather started getting sloppy. Once I got it on and pumped up though the tire
was so wide that it was filling up the frame. Melissa managed to get it
balanced but I could feel it rubbing as soon as I started out for a test drive.
I went back downstairs and went through every single used tire they had, only
finding one tire of the right size that also had a directional tread. Melissa
was impressed with that one too, telling me that what I’d selected was a winter
tread. The pattern consisted of a very close row of crescent shaped grooves
with the curve in one direction and with two parallel straight grooves cutting
through those. There were no studs though, which is what I would associate with
a winter tire. She informed me that the tire I’d selected would cost $75 if I’d
bought it new.
I installed it but then realized
that I’d put it on with the curved pattern pointing backwards so I switched it.
I mentioned to Melissa that this
time of year I mostly just use the bike for campus and back rather than any
really long rides. She asked what I was studying and I told her about my
courses. She told me that when she was young she ran away and worked for a
carnie for about six years. During that time she read all the Penguin Classics.
As usual I was at Bike Pirates for
over three hours. Because of my recent cheque from the Toronto Housing
Allowance Program, I felt like I could afford to donate a little more than
usual, so I put a $20 into the box.
Later outside of my window there was
an argument between a drunken woman in her 40s and a man in his 70s that did
not know one another. I didn’t catch the beginning but I guess he had chastised
her about something she was doing on the street, which caused her to follow
him, shouting about him being a hypocrite because he was drinking. A car pulled
up and a group that looked like they might be the old man’s family, a man in
his 40s that could have been his son and a couple of kids that may have been
his grandchildren. The younger man came between them and tried to calmly reason
with the woman. He seemed to be explaining that the old guy was not drinking
but I couldn’t make out exactly what he said. Her friend came up to stand
beside her and the old man came back. At one point there was even a little
scuffle between the woman and the old man before the son broke it up. As they
were walking away towards Lansdowne, she shouted after them, “Go back to
Pakiland!” before her friend pulled on the back of her t-shirt and she
staggered east with him.
By the end of Saturday I did not get
any academic writing done at all because I still wanted to finish reading
Anselm’s Proslogian for a third time but by bedtime I hadn’t quite made it.
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