Zen And The Art of Bicycle Maintenance

3 September - woke up in coogee - no hope of a sleepin as had to get back cityside to see a place in redfern that had been favoured by the potential housemates - very nice owner, private rental, pretty cool inside, ratty outside, slightly dodgy but very convenient area and best of all, cheap. Headed back to glebe where I had perform the necessary surgery of mending chevette's front wheel. Have never had a broken spoke before, almost certainly weakened by the crash, and didn’t really know exactly how it was supposed to be done. the mechanic at the shop instantly told me he wouldn’t be able to do it for me that day (oh how I miss simon's fix it on the spot mechanics) but gave me the vague theory of how to do it. Took an age to get the tyre off the wheel (the old rims are very different to modern ones - impossible to get new tyres in or out) and then the delicate lifting off of rim tape, removing the old butt, twistingthe spoke into position before screwing it back in. After I got it in I had the incredibly fiddly fine tuning to tighten the spoke just enough to pull the wheel back into shape. Eventuallygot it to 'good enough' and then had the horribly frustrating time of gettingthe tyre back on and there was a lot of swearing and crying before it finally popped in its home. All in all, one and a half hours - but, I may have learned something. did the longride down to gordon to celebrate father's day with my mother (dad was there as well) - got fed, gt my laundry done and did some stuff on the computer (i wonder if they realise that the only reason I come over is to abuse the facilities - well, they probably know now) then headed back homeward richly laden with clean underwear and leftover chinese food - got to st leonards and what do you know, another flat - with no spare tube. Cursing the non existent gods I did a roadside patch job and whilst not without much frustration it all worked out pretty quickly and pretty effectively - was waiting for the hiss letting me know the patch wasn't holding but it never came so very chuffed with my success. Did a bit of socialisation to finish the evening and .... Oh, nothing really interesting happened so i'm not going to pretend that it did...