The Bike I'm Building Has Sprouted Wings, but it Still Can't Fly

            On Tuesday I timed the piece that I’m going to perform on June 3^rd and found that with just a straight read and sing-through, without acting things out, it’s just under ten minutes long. That should work fine for my ten minute set. I started working on memorizing it the day before and it shouldn’t be a problem to have it all in my head by 45 days from now.

            At 17:00 I took my cycle building project to Bike Pirates. After putting the frame on a stand I went home to get the old Phoenix just in case I could still salvage parts from it.

            My volunteer was a guy who I’ve found in the past to be somewhat abrasive, but who seems to have softened towards me after seeing me a few times. I think his name is Dennis, though he’s not the Dennis that is almost always in the shop. I asked him for advice on what to do next and he suggested that I could put a seat on. I tried the old seat from the Phoenix but he told me that the post was slightly too small. After searching through three drawers of posts though, we couldn’t find one that wasn’t either too loose or too tight, so we moved on and started working on the brakes.

            It took a while to find a compatible set of front brakes. I didn’t remember till the next day though that I actually had a set of Weinmann front brakes that had been dangling from the frame when I bought it, to match the Weinmann back brakes that were already attached. Dennis found a set of Shimano front brakes anyway and we ran a cable for them. He found a 68.58 cm front wheel, but we didn’t install it yet.
             Dennis was somewhat frustrated with my bike because he says that it's a classic, vintage frame from the hand-built era for which it's hard to find compatible parts. 

            We ran a brake cable for the back wheel but didn’t connect it because we needed to find a matching back wheel and a freewheel for that. At this point Dennis wandered off and Alain helped me for the rest of the time. He determined that we had to change the axel so that it fit with the freewheel.

            After three hours there was lots more to do, but I wanted to go home to start dinner. Alain persuaded me to at least put on the back rim for a sense of completion. We ended up installing the front wheel as well, so I was actually able to roll the project out of the shop this time rather than carrying it as usual.

            It was a little depressing when I put in my donation at the end because the $16.00 I had was the last of my money until I got a tax return, which might not be until May. That would mean possibly at least two weeks before I could come back and work on the project again.

            At the front desk, Dawn suggested that maybe I hadn’t gotten as much done on my bike as I’d hoped. I told her that I had no hopes about it, since things could sometimes go in a direction of just working on one tiny thing or they could move forward very quickly and one never knows. I said that hope is a waste of time and a drug. She said, “Hopium?” She reminded me that they have food there but I said that I had some at home. She urged me to at least take some cantaloupe, because it’s good for me, so I agreed and so she cut a couple of slices and put it in a baggie for me.

            My project actually looked more like a bike as I was pushing it home and it was surprisingly tall with the wheels on compared to when it was just the height of the frame.