Complications, Crud, and a Christening

Some of you may already know this, but for those of you who don't: My bike, out of the box, gave me quite a few problems. As a disclaimer ahead of time, I will admit that, after assembling what I could have assembled on my own, I should really have just taken the darn thing into one of Ithaca's wonderful LBS and had them go over it. But I was impatient. And lazy. Mostly Lazy.

At any rate, on my first ride with my (mercifully patient) friend Brian Erickson (P2SF alum 2008), everything had started out just fine. Prior to this ride, I'd only been on an indoor trainer, and even then, not nearly as often as I would've liked to be, so this was a road test to get all the kinks out. We rode down and out of the circle apartments, without incident. As we were riding down the hill towards campus, however, my front wheel began to wobble unsteadily. Knowing that this was a bad thing, I decided to stop and hop off of my bike. Upon inspection, it turned out that my spokes were completely loosened out of the nipples that held them taut to the rim. At the time, I was determined that I would complete this ride, so in a moment of hypermachismo, I thought "sure, I can just tighten these down with my hands. no problem!"

Needless to say, that's impossible. Unless you're a robot. Or the Hulk. Or the robot-hulk. An in any of those three scenarios, you'd likely lack the dexterity to do so anyway. So I had my roommate Mario come and pick me up as I sat, dejected, on the street corner with my busted bike tire and a small cloud of disappointment.

Getting back to my apartment, I broke out my handy-dandy Zinn and the art of Road Bike Maintenance and a spoke wrench and got to work with my ignorance. I tightened a few spokes, convinced I was doing well, before I realized... this is probably like tightening a drum: each spoke corresponds to another spoke across the way, and the tautness of one end manipulates the tautness of all ends. Having realized this, I plowed ahead anyway, shrugging and saying to myself "eh, it'll be okay."

Clearly, it was not. On my next longish ride out (again, with the almost Bodhisattva-like Brian), things went well on the outset again--this time for almost twenty miles. Like the last time, however, complications set in concerning my front wheel and its aversion to tight spokes. Exasperated, I hopped off of my bike to tighten the one or two loosened spokes I could see. As I was getting back onto my bike, however, I turned around to see that my back tire was flat. Now on the verge of cursing any number of gods, I sat down with the tire-irons and spare inner tube that I had just brought on a whim before leaving the house to change the flat. I was planning on riding out my stock tires, at least for one or two hundred miles, but after getting a flat on my very first ride, I decided that they would be the first to go.

In order to resolve all issues with my front wheel, I took it in to the shop the next day. They told me it was "pretty bad," which I interpreted to mean "don't fuck with this stuff, just bring it in, you dolt." Confident in the integrity of my back wheel, I was eager to put my bike back together with two tensed, trued, and ready to tumble wheels. Unfortunately, my back wheel would be the next thing to let me down. It had always been problematic--the plastic spoke guard would rub against the spokes and rattle like a skeleton on speed--but about 100 miles after my front wheel drama, I found loose spokes on this wheel, as well.

I found said loose spokes because I was trying to clean my tires, which had been covered in a fine film of tar thanks to an inexplicably sticky street past Old King Road. By the time I knew I was riding in tar (and not just, say, oil/water/brake fluid) it was too late to turn back, and I began picking up tiny rocks and other possible puncturers in the goop on my wheels. I flinched every time a rock was flung up into my bike's frame; I could hear each tinny pinging sound as it happened, over and over again. Frustrated by the goop, the spoke guard, the spokes themselves, and frightened about any other possible deathtrap awaiting me in the depths of my bike's deeply troubled existence on this earth, I took the poor thing in this morning to the shop and simply told them, "Fix it."

I've never been much for naming things. Ever since I was younger, I feel as though many of my most cherished possessions have remained either nameless, or named by that which they are. I believe I once had a frog named "Mr. Frog." Since I started playing the trumpet in sixth grade, I've met a number of people who've named their B-flats. (Though this one always kind of freaked me out. Do I name it a girl, like a car? And if I do, is there some kind of pseudo-Freudian implication because I blow on a decidedly phallic end, placing my lips suggestively over it countless times in a year? Taking it a step further, if there is a sexual component, wouldn't it be more natural for me to name it after a guy? Or is that too much to confess, when people ask its name?) Many people I know have named their cars, but mine remains unnamed. I guess I have a hard time ascribing gender to something inanimate. Perhaps I'm too steeped in psychosexual thinking to make any gendered, inanimate object not stand in for the phallus, so I've in general avoided naming things at all. But I know I'll be expected to name this bike, as well... and in this instance, I think I actually have something fitting that I can stand to live with for at least this entire summer.

Based on all the problems, complications and embarrassment this bike has called me, I christen it l'Enfant Terrible, the Terrible Child.

Maybe after 3,800 miles or so, it will finally grow up.