Sweet Child In Time

           

            On Tuesday I finished re-reading Emmanuel Levinas’s “Meaning and Sense” and then began to scan through Jacques Derrida’s “The Ends of Man” in order to start making notes from his references to proximity and the proper of man in preparation for my exam, when it was once again time to take my ride over to Bike Pirates.

            I decided to replace the old brake system that was level with the pedals to one that’s almost as high as the crossbar. First of all I had to clear out the hole where the brakes would be attached and hope that it was big enough. I would have been screwed if the hole had to be enlarged because at Bike Pirates they aren’t allowed to use power tools, I guess for insurance reasons.

Luckily the new system fit but the brakes were too long, so I had to dig through their bin of second hand brakes for a system that fit. Dennis, who’d been the one to suggest the new system, arrived and for the most part helped me, between smoke breaks about every fifteen minutes. Even though the day before I’d replaced the cable, for some reason I needed a new cable and Dennis had me prepare a new housing, which involved smoothing down each end of the casing so that it wouldn’t be so sharp that it could cut the cable that it would be housing. He got me a file and told be to file the ends. I worked for a long time and was making very slow progress. Thankfully, another guy that was working at the next stand, and who also volunteers there, had been watching me and how long it was taking. He told me that the file must have lost its roughness because it should only take about six swipes for me to file down each end. He brought me another file and he was right. I like it when people are observant and give a fuck at the same time.

Rerouting the cable wasn’t that difficult but it was around the time that the brakes needed to be balanced and fine tuned that Dennis abandoned me and went off to eat pasta and chat in the lounge area. I spent a lot of time waiting, but I finally got the attention of a volunteer to help with the adjustments. He started telling me though that the system I’d picked might not be the right one because it might have a tendency to stick. He dug out another brake system and suggested that I change. By this time though I’d already been there for three hours and despite his insistence that it wouldn’t take long, I knew otherwise. In my experience, five minutes of Bike Pirates time translates to about half an hour of real time. I wanted to make functional the brakes I’d installed so I could start adjusting my front brakes before closing time.

Dennis never came back to help me but finally another volunteer with whom he’d been chatting came to help. We finished with the back brakes by 20:30 and then because we were running short of time, my friendly volunteer forwent the usual DIY policy and instead mostly DIH. He discovered that my front brake cable was broken but he found a used one that was in good condition.

Again, changing the cable was not the big job, but rather the adjustment. The brake was sticking and he kept on tightening here and loosening there, as Child In Time and My Woman From Tokyo played over the sound system. Finally he asked me the name of the band. He looked to be in his thirties, so it was understandable that he wouldn’t be familiar with the music of Deep Purple. Child In Time is my favourite Deep Purple song. He did know some of the songs like “Highway Star” and “Space Truckin” though. He asked me if there was some connection between Deep Purple and Hawkwind. I said I didn’t think so. He asked if someone famous hadn’t been a member of Hawkwind. I only found out later that Lemmy had been in the band before forming Motorhead. I wouldn’t be surprised though if the Deep Purple album title “Machine Head” had influenced Lemmy as to what to name his band. At 20:45 a volunteer that was assisting a woman told her that she’d have to take her bike down and leave but my volunteer told him that their priority is to make sure that people get home safe, so she could stay until repairs that would achieve that goal were accomplished. We were already a half an hour past closing time and my volunteer couldn’t figure out how to get the brakes not to stick, so I had to leave.

            On Monday and Tuesday combined I’d spent eight hours at Bike Pirates, which really cut into the studying I needed to do for my exam.

            I had to eat dinner an hour later than usual.

            I watched an episode of I Love Lucy in which Ricky brought home a $30,000 fur coat that Lucy thought was for her. When Ricky was about to tell her that it was a rental for his nightclub show, she exclaimed, “You remembered our anniversary!” He was so embarrassed that he hadn’t remembered it that he let her think he’d bought her the coat. Then he had to try to figure out how to get it away from her. He arranged for Fred Mertz to pose as a burglar, but a real burglar showed up first, and was scared away by Fred’s arrival. Finally Lucy found out from Ethel that the coat wasn’t for her so she got revenge by buying a second hand fake fur coat of which she knew Ricky wouldn’t be able to tell the difference and then in front of Ricky she preceded to cut the coat into pieces while Ricky fainted. It also turned out that it wasn’t even their anniversary after all.