Chlorine Gas

            On Thursday at 11:30 I went over to Bike Pirates so I’d be at the front of the line when they opened at noon. While I was waiting I read a page of St Julian the Hospitaler that told about Julian as a child being religiously devout, generous to the poor, but also cruel to animals. His first murder was a church mouse that he found annoying and his next were several small birds.

            The middle-aged Latin American guy who sells things like streetcar tokens and cigarettes out of his pockets on the street was standing a few doors west with a big empty basket on his shoulder. He'd probably just found it while walking around. Three young Latin women walked by and he spoke to them in Spanish. They gestured back to him in a friendly but dismissive way. Another young woman walked by and he said in French “Ça va bien?” and when she answered “Ça va” he pointed at her and said, “Ahh! See? I knew it!” She told him she wasn’t French and kept on walking.

            Den opened the shop and since he was the only one there he at the start only let the first two go to the stands. Once he assessed our problems and saw that they wouldn’t tax him too much he let the next guy in.

            As soon as I started removing my back wheel, half of my broken axle fell to the floor. I decided that rather than rifling through their bins for used parts as usual, I’d just buy a new axle. It was actually the first time I’d ever gotten a new axle at Bike Pirates and Den said that’s what he always does because that way all of the nuts are already on it and it would probably last much longer. The new ones were a bit longer than my old one but Den assured me it didn’t matter.

            I removed the gear wheel and the ball bearings and cleaned out all the old dirty grease, and then I generously re-greased it and put in nine new ball bearings on each side. Den helped me adjust the position of the cones to compensate for the extra length of the new axle and assisted me in arriving at the delicate balancing of friction and play between the cups of the hub and the cones of the axle.

            I noticed that a couple of my spokes were a little loose and so I mounted the wheel on the trueing stand and tightened them without bothering to true the rim.

            When putting the wheel back on my bike I saw how much longer the new axle was and anticipated that it would be impossible for me to loosen the left locknut on the road if a problem arose because my socket wrench would not be able to reach it. I looked for some spacers to go between the dropout and the locknut so that the locknut would be accessible to my socket. I found one five millimeter and one ten millimeter spacer that together did the trick.

            I tested the brakes a few times while spinning the wheel and the wheel went off balance and so I re-secured it in the dropouts and tried it again. I adjusted the brakes so that the right pad was as close to the rim as possible in order to compensate for their tendency to drift to the right. I took my velo up the alley for a test drive and it seemed to work fine.

            The new axle cost $5 and the ball bearings were ten cents each so I rounded them up to $2 and gave an extra $10 for a donation.

            I went home and had come chickpeas with garlic, salt and hemp oil for lunch and took a siesta.

            It was almost 18:00 when I got up and too late for a bike ride but it had rained while I’d been sleeping anyway and so I wouldn’t have gone out anyway.

            I’d planned to do laundry that afternoon but decided that two hours at Bike Pirates had been enough work for that day and so I put it off till Friday.

            I noticed that the vinegar in which I’ve been soaking my amethyst needed topping up and so I grabbed a jug and poured some more in. Suddenly I realized that I’d mistakenly picked up the jug of bleach instead of the jug of vinegar and so I had to dump out the whole thing because vinegar with bleach creates toxic chlorine gas. Hopefully I got it I time before causing myself any damage. At the most there was probably only about 5% bleach in the vinegar and I think even 20% won’t do that much damage. I think the liquid is supposed to bubble before the gas is produced and that didn’t happen. I rinsed the rock and the bucket to clean the bleach off, refilled the bucket with water and I’ll soak the rock in water until I can buy more vinegar.

            I watched a couple of episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story a chimpanzee named Seymour which was purchased to demonstrate learning capacity has no capacity for learning and so the dean wants to sell it to a medical lab for dissection. Maynard begs to be given a chance to teach Seymour something and so he takes him to the Gillises and tries to train him. At the last minute the chimp suddenly demonstrates an ability to recreate great paintings like the Mona Lisa.

            In the second story Chatsworth Osborn is kicked out by his mother because during a hunting trip for which he’d rented Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont he rammed and sank a Brazilian destroyer and two Australian fishing trawlers with his yacht. She says he can’t come back until he becomes a responsible human being. Dobie’s father, thinking that there is eventual profit to be made from the gesture, offers to put Chatsworth up. Herbert spends a lot of money to keep Chatsworth in the lifestyle to which he is accustomed, even to the point of letting him keep his polo pony in Dobie’s bedroom. Herbert starts to feel that he’s not going to get any reward after all. When Chatsworth suddenly gives Herbert and Winnie gifts, Herbert wonders where the money has come from when Chatsworth is cut off from the Osborn fortune. Chatsworth gets $3000 from the Osborn butler because he has dirt on him and plans to send the Gillises on a surprise holiday to the Riviera. Chatsworth has a press which he uses to make his calling cards and he is using it to make traveling cards for Herbert and Winnie. But when Herbert looks through the keyhole he sees a pile of cash on the table and Dobie and Chatsworth working the printing press. He concludes that Chatsworth has corrupted Dobie and that they have become counterfeiters. He bursts in and destroys the money before they can make him understand that it’s real.