After leaving Aesthetics class on Friday, November 4th I had some difficulty unlocking my bike, but managed after a few tries to get it working.
I went along Queen and stopped at the Australian Boot Company. Before locking my bike I stopped in front of their door to make sure they weren’t too busy to treat my boots. The store looked empty, but just as I turned to go to the bike stand a mother walking with three boys turned and led them all into the store. I shrugged and decided to try it anyway, so I went to the nearest available stand. I put my key in the lock, but was having difficulty turning it. I applied a little more force and then the handle broke on the key. It wasn’t stuck in the lock, but I couldn’t get it to turn, so there was nothing to be done. I had to postpone winterizing my boots for another day and go home for the spare key.
When I got home I sprayed some WD-40 in the lock and then went looking for my spare key. I found three of them on a ring, in an oval bowl on a shelf in the living room. The problem was though that the key didn’t seem to fit. It kind of looked like it had the same silhouette as the one that had broken, but it wasn’t turning or even going in, so I assumed it must have been the wrong key. I took the broken one to the hardware store and asked if they could copy a bike lock. They could, but the woman behind the counter, wanted to make sure that she’d found the right size blank key to carve, so she handed it to me and told me to take it to my lock and see if it would go in. I took it home and the key seemed to go in, but I brought my bike back to Home Hardware just in case. The clerk tried the key and told me that something seemed to be blocking the key from going in all the way. She said it was like there was the tip of a broken key in there, but I assured her that couldn’t be the case, because I’d been using the same key for years and all that was broken on that was the handle. I suggested that mud had maybe gotten in from the last couple of rainy days. I mentioned that I’d sprayed it with WD-40, but she told me I should never spray WD-40 in a lock. She called one of the managers, who’s been working at that store for at least twenty years. He put some graphite in the hole and wiggled the key for a while. I asked why one shouldn’t put WD-40 in a lock. They said that it gums up the lock and prevents the pins from moving. He advised me to just go home and keep trying with the key. She suggested that I try a paper clip.
I went home and fiddled with it for half an hour with a piece of wire, with the key and even squirted in some more of the forbidden WD-40, but nothing worked. Nick Cushing called at around 16:00 like he said he would. He told me he’d be coming by in half an hour. I kept trying to move the key until he arrived. He had a look at it and decided that the lock was fucked. He advised me to just buy a cable chain and a padlock.
We had tea and chatted for a while. Nick had brought with him an alternative camera to the one he’d leant me back in the summer and the bracket for which had broken that would hold it firmly on my bike. He told me this one could do double duty as both a bike cam and a video and sound recorder for my songs. He also brought me a keyboard for my computer. Nick walked with me to the hardware store and helped me select a cable and a padlock. Nick kept on asking the counter person to take down different locks off the wall and there was a particularly comical and painful moment where he couldn’t communicate which one he wanted her to pick and she kept on moving in the wrong direction, “To your left! To your left!” Finally, the one I picked, on his advice was a black Master lock. It had a plastic plug that would protect the keyhole from the rain and snow, which seemed like a good idea. I asked for a tube of graphite but Nick said if it seizes up I could just use some WD-40 on it. Man, was I confused about the WD40. I spent $32.74, which was most of what I’d expected to have for grocery money, with a little left over to buy a couple of cans of beer. I’d spent ten dollars on my bike at Bike Pirates the day before.
Later I looked up the idea that WD-40 is bad for locks. The internet seems to be split on this topic but leaning towards the opinion that the idea that WD-40 gums up locks is a myth. WD-40 evaporates after use, unlike three-in-one, so for the most part it shouldn’t clog up a lock or attract very much dirt. There is an argument that when graphite gets wet it also becomes gummy. If WD-40 evaporates, it makes me think that maybe it’s a mistake for me to use it on my bike chain. I wondered though if I could have eventually fixed my lock by just using more WD-40.
Nick and I walked east on Queen to Dufferin and then down to King, where he deposited his film crew paycheque at the CIBC machine. We walked west on King, and as we approached Cowan, Nick asked me if I would like to go into Nick’s Bar and have a beer. At that moment a middle-aged woman who had just passed, stopped and turned to answer, “I would like to do that! I would like to do that very much!” She was obviously fishing for an invitation, and since we didn’t offer, she continued on her way and we crossed the street.
Nick is a connoisseur of scuzzy bars and I think this one might have entered into his top five. Nick’s Bar doesn’t look like the walls have been painted or the ceilings redone since the days when smoking was allowed inside of businesses. The place is the colour of the inside of an old teacup. The round tables are covered in worn arborite with patches of fibreboard showing through and the chairs all have cracked upholstery of different designs. The ones with the metal frames seemed to have held together better but the wooden ones have all been reinforced where the legs meet the seats, with “L” brackets and screws. There was a couple in their early thirties enjoying a game of pool. I noticed she was scratching a lot. A tired woman, perhaps of Vietnamese descent, carried a plate of french fries to the bar. A regular joked with her that she was staying but she insisted good-naturedly that she was going home.
Nick bought a small pitcher of very light draft for us to share. It did hit the spot after my hassles with the bike lock. Nick offered to buy another pitcher when we were done, but I declined. We walked to Dunn Avenue and then back up to my place. Nick went off to renew some of his Toronto affiliations.
I went upstairs to work on cutting off my old bike cable. I had to pretty much empty all my kitchen drawers to find my hacksaw handle and blade, but I couldn’t find the two parts that attach the blade to the handle. I tried to just use the blade in my hand, but that was only cutting the plastic cover of the cable and digging into my hand. I made another search through all the drawers and managed to find, among hundreds of screws and things I’ve collected, one of the hacksaw connectors. I put on my right winter glove and tried to use it to grip the blade more comfortably as I sawed, but I realized that it would take hours for me to get through the cable that way. I went back to he drawers and once again sifted through all the little pieces of practically designed but mostly useless metal, and finally I found the last part for my hacksaw, making a vow at the same time that I would never take it apart again. Even with the hacksaw, it took at least twenty minutes to get through the cable.
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