Amazing Threads

            When I got home from the food bank on Saturday I had time to put my groceries away. I also made a cup of coffee but I didn’t have time to finish it before it was time to take my cycle building project over to Bike Pirates. Dennis signed me in when he saw me arrive and Ted was the volunteer that adopted me this time. I had brought along the crank set that I’d removed from the frame last time in order to set up the bottom bracket. My expectation had been that I would be reinstalling that but Ted said the bottom bracket was loose and there was lots of parts to remove before putting anything on.

            I went back to my place to get my old Phoenix bike to see what parts could be transferred from the old to the new. I was relieved when Ted told me that quite a few components might be transferable from one machine to the other, like the handlebars and even the derailleur, though the derailleur that was still hanging onto the French bike was looking functional as well.

            Another volunteer, Dave, who I recognized from both before at Bike Pirates and earlier that week at Bike Chain, indicated my velo and commented that it had the best name for a bike he’d ever heard. “Phoenix?” I asked. “No, Ditch Pig!” “Ditch Pig?” He explained that underneath the paint of the brand name “Phoenix” are written the words “Ditch Pig”. I told him I’d had the bicycle for twenty years and I didn’t know that. Looking it up later it seems that Phoenix was the house brand of Cyclepath here in Toronto. It was a good bike for the low price and I guess my ex-girlfriend bought it back in the late 80s or early 90s at Cyclepath. It was apparently called a Ditch Pig too, maybe because it was a little heavier and thicker than the average bikes being sold.

            For the last few times that I’ve been at Bike Pirates, the guy with the dreadlocks who’s been waving up at me while I’m playing guitar and singing almost every weekday morning for the last couple of years, has been fixing his bike. He said hello to me the first time he saw me there and patted me on the back this time when he arrived, so I assumed he recognized me. I asked him what happened to his red car though and he seemed surprised that I knew about it. He told me the car had died. I guessed that he was taking the TTC to work now and he confirmed that. Then I inquired as to whether he was fixing his bike up so he could ride to work. He shared that he fixing his bike because he was preparing to become an Uber driver for food delivery. He added that he’s already signed up and has the bag. I commented that I don’t think I’d want that kind of job. He said it was wild that I remembered his car. I recounted how I’d always seen him park in the Dollarama parking lot on weekday mornings while I was playing guitar. He suddenly had a look of surprised recognition and exclaimed, “That’s you?” Then he enthusiastically shook my greasy hand and declared that his day is always off if he doesn’t see me playing up in my window and watching over him. I expressed surprise that he hadn’t recognized me before at Bike Pirates, since he’d said hi as if he knew me. He explained that was because he felt a connection with me because we’re the same kind of person. But he asserted that he must have known it was me on some level.

            He introduced himself and said his name was Duwon. Then he excitedly started telling Ted about me singing my heart out to Queen Street every morning. Ted just said, “Cool!”

            Ted had me remove the derailleur and the brakes but to keep them for when we are ready to run new cables through for them. My crank set was missing one bolt but we had a hard time finding a replacement that had a similar spacer. He thought that I might just as well get another second hand crank set from their bin. We got one and set it aside. The focus for this building stage became my headset. I cleaned out the cup for the fork ball bearings and also the one for the handlebars and replaced all the tiny ball bearings. At first though we had been having trouble getting the top ring off the headset threads. It was partially off but not turning any more after a certain point. We took it over to the vice but when Ted told me to turn it upside down all the ball bearings fell out. He was worried that now we would have difficulty knowing which ball bearings were needed. I was pretty sure they were really tiny and bent down to pick one up but Ted said that I shouldn’t pick ball bearings off the floor because one never knows if they are really the right ones. I picked one up anyway because I was almost certain they were the ones that I’d seen fall. We ended up using that size anyway. I loaded the cups with grease and ball bearings and then set them aside.

            A meal was being cooked in the kitchen and Melissa was speaking with Ted about how everything has to be vegan at Bike Pirates. I hadn’t known they were that strict. I declared, “The human body is a meat processing machine”. Melissa agreed with me, but just shrugged and stated, “Those are the rules here!” Ted added that if people weren’t meant to eat cows they wouldn’t be so damn tasty.

            With a wrench and a lot of effort I managed to get the ring unscrewed but Ted determined that the forks needed to be rethreaded. Dave seems to be the most respected bike expert in the shop. He brought out a flat box with the words, “Do not (“not” was underlined three times) use this tool unless you know what you are doing!” We put the forks in the vice and then Dave assembled the die. He showed me how to do it and then handed it over to me, but I made sure he watched me until I got it right. I needed to do a half turn clockwise, a quarter turn counterclockwise, then a quarter turn clockwise again. After repeating that process again I was to put a drop of cutting fluid on each blade of the die and then continue in the same way until the whole thing was rethreaded. Dave told me to go slow because the die is easily damaged and it costs $200.00. After about ten minutes of doing the turns as slowly as I could, Ted assured me that if I went a little faster it wouldn’t damage the die. After another ten minutes or so it was getting very difficult to make the turns but I did them anyway. Finally Dave came up and told me I was done. I asked how I should have known that I was done. He answered, “When it got really hard to turn”. He told me that I’d added two new threads to the steerer tube, but that it didn’t matter.

            Ted looked at my threading job and told me several times that it was amazing. Half forward, a quarter back, a quarter forward, repeat, add cutting fluid and start again seems like something that it would be pretty hard to screw up though, so I don’t know what I did to make it such an exceptional thread. The problem now was that the ring that came with the bike wouldn’t screw down the tube so as to cover the ball bearing cup. Ted found one that would work but it wasn’t of the right dimensions and so he just screwed it down to keep the ball bearings from spilling out until we found a ring that was the right size.

            I had only planned on being in the shop for a couple of hours because I had lunch to eat, errands to run and a siesta to take, but as usual I’d gotten caught up in things that had to be finished on my bike once they’d been started. Ted told me that I could start un-bending my forks with a special tool that he showed me, but I told him that I was burnt out and I’d be coming back Monday evening to continue. I put all my tools away and got a plastic bag in which to put all my loose parts, then I took my “Ditch Pig” home and settled up at the desk with a $10.00 donation before taking my project him.

            When I got to the front door of my building though I realized that when I had taken the Phoenix home, I’d had to pee and on my way to the washroom I’d tossed my keys on the kitchen table and had stupidly forgotten to grab them on the way out. For the first time in years I had locked myself out of my building. The only thing I could do was to stand in front and wait for someone to either come in or out. I thought hopefully that it shouldn’t take long for that to happen since I hear my six building neighbours stomping up or down the stairs at all hours of the day and night. The guy in the room next to my apartment always seems to be going down to the donut shop and Sundar, the super, is frequently hanging out below even though he lives on West Lodge now. But there was no one from my place in the Coffeetime and not one person arrived or left as I stood there for several minutes. It was late afternoon and it was just starting to edge past the point where I would be comfortable standing outside with just a sweatshirt on.

            I did see the Parkdale Amazon. She was walking east on the other side of Queen wearing a tight shin-length dress with red ruffles at the bottom. I had never seen her at street level before and she was a strikingly tall woman, even without the drastic stilettos that she was wearing. Her little female friend was up the street and when the Amazon saw her she began to exaggerate a swivily walk that made her red ruffles swing like urgent churchbells calling the faithless to prayer.

            An hour passed and several times so did an African guy that used to live in my building. He noticed that I’d taken to banging on the front door, even though the only person in the building that would ever hear someone knocking from the street would be me, and I wasn’t home. He stopped to ask, “Nobody there?” I explained that I’d locked myself out. He thought for a second and asked if I had a cell phone with me. I just happened to have my smart phone in my pocket. He gave me my upstairs neighbour; David’s number, just in case he was home. But when I tried it I got a recording from his service saying their customer wasn’t available right now.

            After an hour and a quarter with still no one from my building coming or going, I saw a young woman unlocking the door for the building next door and the apartments above the Chinese restaurant. I asked her if she lived at the back and she confirmed that she did. I told her that I’d locked myself out but if I could get to the roof I’d be able to get into my place. She told me to go around to the alley and she’d open the garage. It made sense that she didn’t want a strange guy coming into her apartment, so I gladly went around to the back. She opened the garage door and I followed her up the fire escape. She continued up to the third floor and while carrying my bike frame, I ducked under a horizontal rectangular restaurant vent pipe and stepped over the garbage and beer empties strewn all over the back of the rear second floor apartment of the building next door, till I finally made my way to the welcome railing of my own building’s deck, climbed over and got into my apartment, which couldn’t have been locked without me having had my key in the first place.

            I had to prepare my income statement and copy out my pay statements, then put them in the prepared envelope to mail. Then I walked out to the liquor store, making sure I had my keys this time, and bought two cans of Creemore. Then I put the envelope in my backpack to mail it on the way to the supermarket. Easter Sunday would be the day that I would break my annual vegetarian diet and so I wanted to buy a few things that I hadn’t gotten from the food bank. I was surprised that Freshco wasn’t crowded, considering that they’d be closed on Sunday. I bought grapes, grapefruit, strawberries and a tomato. They had a good deal on whole chickens and another on peameal bacon, so I bought least heavy of each item. I picked up some yogourt, orange juice and a block of tasteless cheddar cheese only because it was cheap and they were out of the better brand.