Admitting Defeat

The past couple of weeks I’ve been getting excited about being able to hop back on a bike after Thanksgiving. My brother had obtained one for me from his roommate, and although a few repairs (ie tubes, tires, greasing, rack & bell addition) were necessary, they were certainly doable at relatively low cost. The spare tires were already there, just needed to be installed with fresh tubes, and everything would be peachy.

To the left you’ll see a shot of the bike, a Jeep TJ Sport. I’ve got one wheel off in the photo because I was in the middle of switching out the tube and tire. Yup, there’s a bit of rust on the gears from improper storage, and a bit on the chain too, but nothing that can’t be handled by cannibalizing good working parts off the old Carerra Algonquin. Pulling off those parts was a part of my first order of business. So I went to work removing front & rear light mounts, rear rack, carry-all, and bell. The extras that turn the bike into something useful for commuting. I went out and bought the tubes for the wheels, a tire-liner to prevent them from getting ripped as I plowed along the roads, a new bell because the old one was no good, and a can of cleaner for the chain and gear wheels that I had been looking for anyways. I’ll talk about my cleaning and grease stuff in a different post sometime.

So there I am, everything ready to go. I pop the front wheel off the bike, remove the tire and tube. I could see through the tire at several points, and it only took me a couple seconds to see where the tube was split. I grinned. Honestly, I did. This was what I was expecting, and I was prepared for it. I got the new tube, tire liner, and tire in place. Then I filled it with air and it looked good. The tire is still nicely inflated now, so I know I did a good job.

Then I got to the back wheel. The gears are there, so I expected it to be a little trickier to get off. The basic mechanics of it are the same, but there’s a chain in the way. I looked online and found a site that had a picture showing the one extra step involved. Sounded easy. Well… The nut on the gear wheel side was definitely put on with a gun. And it seems the weather that it had been exposed to while rusting, softened the nut itself. After only a couple of tries. The nut was completely rounded. Not fun. I went out to Canadian Tire and found a nut splitter. Unfortunately it’s manual, but no worries, I have decent muscles. To the right, you’ll see the results… After I tried to get around the nut splitter’s shortcoming.

The nut splitter would not stay over the back portion of the nut. It went right through the standard front part, but the area that looks a lot like a connected washer, it just slipped right off. I went at that part with a chisel and hammer. Took almost an hour to get as far as I did, and the last 20 minutes or so I was making no headroom on the nut, and was actually destroying the chisel (which now rests in the trash).

So after a moderate sum was spent on parts and tools, after we went through all the trouble of getting the bike down here from North Bay, and after all the work removing parts and attaching them to the new bike, I have to stop where I am and finally admit something. I’ve now been screwed by older bikes twice since I returned to Ottawa. I need to get one NEW.

Do I have cash for a new bike? Nope. It’s pretty much coming up on the end of the season here anyways. I’ve eyeballed a lot of bikes at Kundstad, the M.E.C. and Bushtaka. There area a lot of sweet rides out there. Hopefully, last year’s models will be reduced to a good price when I’m shopping for a new bike early in the spring.

So there it is! I admit defeat, and am done biking for the season. Until a new bike arrives, I’ll be posting a bunch of memories and probably responses to news articles or research on new bikes. So the blog will still be interesting.

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