Bike Chain

            On Thursday, since I knew that Amy, my Topcuts stylist would be done at 15:00, I definitely had to head down to Dundas and Bay earlier than I’d gone the day before. I got a few things done at home and managed to get rolling in the early afternoon.

            Amy was just finishing up a customer when I arrived at Topcuts, so I didn’t have to wait very long. I decided to stay with the shorter cut that I’d gotten last time because it would last into the fall before it started growing out to an unmanageable disthetic.

            I told her that I’d built a bike and she related that her father fixes bicycle flat tires in Thailand. She said he used to cut hair but then his hands started shaking too much from his many years of handling a jackhammer for a mining company. He used to go to the top of mountains and make holes where they would to stick dynamite (she said “bombs”), and then they would mine the minerals that slid down the sides of the mountain.

            Amy’s mother cuts her father’s hair now because the barber that he used to go to was drunk once and cut his ear along with his hair.

            Amy is a perfectionist. She keeps coming back and adding little touches. She even shaved the sideburns off of my three-day-old beard.

            My next plan was to get some socks, since every single pair of mine had gotten holey in the heels. I normally get my foot mittens at Walmart but since I was so close I decided to see what Marks Work Warehouse had to offer. Their stock of stockings seemed fancier than I would have expected from Marks. The prominent brand on their shelves was Denver Hayes. They had socks by that company in various styles and materials. I wanted some thicker ones for right now but I was also anticipating the hot summer and wanted to get something cooler. I got two pairs of wool socks and another two pairs of black socks with an almost invisible argyle pattern, made of “mercerized” cotton. I had to look “mercerized” up later to find out what the hell it was. It turns out that it means they used cotton thread with a polyester core, which apparently makes them shinier.

            When I was walking back to my bike I suddenly realized that the wool socks that I’d purchased were for sizes 12 to 16. I’m size 11 and it occurred to me that they might be a little floppy so I took them back to see if I could exchange them for ones that were my size. I couldn’t find any so I had the salesperson check in the back. They didn’t have any, so I got my money back and just kept the argyles.

            My final downtown mission was to get a few things at St Lawrence Market. I took Dundas to Victoria, Victoria to Queen, and Queen to Jarvis. I was still on Queen when my chain started skipping but by the time I’d gotten to Jarvis and King the chain came off. I dismounted to fix it only to discover that my derailleur had come apart, probably back when it had begun to skip. I had lost one of the pulley wheels. It was a strange coincidence that the last major breakdown I’d had on a working bicycle was on the little mountain bike that Nick Cushing had given me and in that case it had also been a derailleur, the parts of which had fallen off. Adding to that coincidence was the fact that I hadn’t had problems with derailleurs in more than a decade and then it happened two times in a row within a month.

            There was nothing to do but to forget about St. Lawrence Market and to start walking back the way I’d come. I wanted to follow the same route that I’d taken just in case I could find the parts that had fallen off. I walked all the way back to where I’d parked beside Canadian Tire but didn’t find them. I then made my way towards Spadina and College in hopes that Bike Chain would still be open. My left ankle gets sore if I do too much walking so I had to stop along the way and tighten the laces on my left boot.

            It was about 15:30 when I got to Bike Chain and I was relieved to see that they would be open until 20:00, especially since there were six customers on the waiting list ahead of me.

            I waited outside on a metal bench and did some writing. I noticed that Bike Chain has an outdoor bike stand and air hose for people that want to make quick repairs with their own tools. That’s a nice convenience, especially if they keep their compressor on after hours.

            Some young guys that showed up after me were trying to work on their bikes in front of where I was sitting when one of them who was wearing a Foodora delivery backpack, dropped and cracked his phone. He mentioned that he’d gotten the phone from the money that came from a settlement after he’d gotten hit by a truck. I think he just went to buy another phone after that.

            Bike Chain has an app that sends a message to a customer’s phone to tell them it’s their turn and they have five minutes to get in there before they give their slot to someone else. I got my message after half an hour.

            I clamped my bike to a stand and started looking to rebuild my derailleur but a volunteer told me that it looked to him like the threads were gone on the hole in the cage plate that receives the bolt that hold the pulley in place. I tried several bolts before I finally accepted his advice to just put on another derailleur.

            I looked through their rear derailleur drawer (try to say “rear derailleur drawer” ten times fast) for another Simplex derailleur but the only one I could find was also missing an outer cage plate. I settled on a Shimano derailleur.

            Although I’m far from turning into a bike mechanic, I needed a lot less help this time then I did when I first installed the Simplex derailleur. I was even able to adjust the “high” and “low” screws so the chain would climb and drop into all the gears.

            I went to wash my hands before taking a test drive and a guy that had been fixing his bike but who seemed like he might have also been a volunteer, advised me to rub the orange hand cleaner into my paws during a count of thirty before washing it off because that time allows the pumice to work its way in. He said that a lot of people just slap the stuff on and then rinse and he hates to eat beside them afterwards.

            Everything was running well during my test drive up and down the little cobblestone driveway in front of Bike Chain, except when my bike was in the lowest of the high gears, which produced a loud whirring sound.

            I went back and re-clamped my bike to the stand. The guy who’d been helping me had gone for lunch but another volunteer advised me that the noise I’d heard was coming from the chain rubbing against the top of my front derailleur cage. He said it was just a matter of raising the front derailleur a bit. I did that, but when I was tightening the clamp on my Simplex front derailleur, its plastic casing, which was already cracked, broke entirely. So both of my prized vintage Simplex derailleurs died on the same day.

            I looked in Bike Chain’s front derailleur drawer but there weren’t any of the Simplex brand, so I figured that if I was going to betray France I might as well match the Shimano rear derailleur with a Shimano front derailleur. I found one that wasn’t too stiff and installed it.

            My second test drive was a success. I was very glad that Bike Chain exists and that I was able to save my velo that day, but since all I’d used were second hand parts and because I’m poor, I only donated $10.00. If the Shimano derailleurs last a long time, the romance of replacing them later on with another set of Simplex derailleurs is probably going to dwindle away from my consciousness. There may be a good reason that Simplex went out of business in 1990.

            I got home by 17:30 and took a siesta at 18:00 with the intention of getting up at 19:30 but I ended up sleeping for two and a half hours. I guess that long walk back from Jarvis and King, my two and a half hours at Bike Chain and skipping lunch had tuckered me out. I had to put together a quick dinner and watched Leave it to Beaver.