The Stuff (Unfulfilled) Dreams are Made of.

This is what a 1966 BSA Lightning shouldn't look like. So beat I got it from a hardcore California biker for just fifty dollars about six years ago. While it has only continued to rot its decadence festers in my soul. It's beauty has tortured me as I am so enamored by its 650cc twin engine. It ranks just third in my engine-aesthetic behind a knuckle-head V-twin and Flathead V8. $3000 worth of new parts and a couple hundred man-hours of work later and maybe it could be a ride-able motorcycle again; with a little more maybe just maybe it could be the cafe racer I've always dreamed of having. The cafe racer I really wanted while throwing clubman bars on the 1978 Honda CB550 I loved dearly but I had to give up too when my life went to shit after college and even with two degrees I couldn't earn enough to keep up the insurance on it.

There's far too much resignation in my life these days...spent biking at night, broke and dispirited, wondering how in the folly of youth and in university I ever let myself dream it could be better than this; losing (slowly) my connection with the people, things and activities that I have loved.

Or my days spent trying to cobble together something useful from the mountains of accumulated trash that actually is my life now. And while I'd like to hope for better, something tells me one of these days I'll be pedaling a busted blue and red bmx bike down a Shreveport street still grumbling about my lot. Even then I probably won't be rid of my foolish dreams. I'll be on the look out for the smile of a pretty girl to melt my heart, solicited by the caricature of a bike rider I'll cut with my six foot frame on a 20" bike.

I'm not Always This Sad; But I'm Never This Happy.

I wish I still smiled like that.

Cruising old comic books recently I came across these advertisements for bicycles.

It seems Sears had discovered the streamline school of design about 50 years later than the automotive and motorcycling industries and (appropriately?) applied it the bicycle. "It looks like it's moving even when it's standing still." The kids seem thrilled with it though.

This next one came out of an issue of Barbie's comic book autographed by the cover artist. A friend of mine told me she earned it modeling as a Barbie for F-A-O Swarz in the third grade. I believe there may have been some gender confusion with regards to this ad's placement as it is obviously a boy's bike.

It is my sincere opinion that this particular model, Dr. Shock, may very well qualify for the worst fenders ever put on a bicycle. In this same issue Barbie herself rode down from her ivory tower of class and refinement, displaying all of her equestrian prowess and talent for high-living, to confront a lowly bicyclist and interrogate him about the location of a lost horse.

I think the subtext of class warfare is absolutely overt here, especially in Barbie's accusatory tone. The message is clear Barbie, the baroness of industry, cannot pedal a bicycle like the rest of the rabble so she must die. She must lose all of the symbols of her materialism: like her pink Corvette and Jeep, her Mansion, and that kept house-boy Ken. All of Barbie's writers and artists were obviously communists and I hope there subversive work was exposed in time to save the minds of our darling daughters.

I also found a bit of nostalgia in an Archie comic. One of those old child-labor fund-raising scams where you were supposed to sell crap for cool stuff.

This looks suspiciously like my elementary school bike which makes me think it must have been completely worthless if they were giving it to kids for peddling their trash.

This skateboard looks like a hot ticket though.

Later that day after giving me these comic books my friend, the Barbie doll model, accompanied me to a tool store. Wandering through the store she informed me that a childhood friend of hers had died at 13 inflating a bicycle tire when a air compressor tank blew up. She is apparently full of strange stories.

I purchased a new grease gun to re-pack hubs with:

On the left next to the cone wrench.

It was $5 and it works great so long as you hold it upside down.

Old Lives and New (Old Stock) Beginnings.

I drove down to Baton Rouge this past weekend hoping to get to ride in Critical Mass but it was rained out; such is my luck. While I was there I did get to have dinner with friends from my old life that I am gradually being disintegrated from by distance and time; a depressing reminder of how much I cared for South Louisiana which has only ever broken my heart for loving it so much. On the upside I did buy a new bike there. It is a NOS Raleigh Super Grand Prix from the 70's.

I found its soft blue quite beautiful and can now rely on the ease and in-expense of its clincher rims the next time the Franklin blows a tubular. The Raleigh actually only cost the equivalent of 6.6 tubular tires ($200). I have only test rode it so far. I will be doing some serious work to it before I take it out on the road. The wheel bearings are grinding like a couple of dry-humping teenagers so I will be overhauling both hubs. It came geared for Alpine inclinations not the humble hills of Highland so I purchased a smaller 5-speed freewheel.

New 14-28 on the left stock 14-38 on the right.

I had intended to buy a small IRD freewheel geared 13-24 but none of the shops in town carried or could order one so I settled for the SunRace pictured above. I am also no fan of exposed brake cables so I ordered some new Jagwire braded steel casing to run like a backbone down the top-tube to the rear brake with the help of these beauties:

Campagnolo brake housing clips.

I found these and the braided steel casing at Scooter's bike shop on Shreveport-Barksdale highway. I'll also be changing the bar-tape to a lighter color and eventually ordering a new saddle when I can afford it. It should be a wonderful bike.

Saturday Morning.

A self portrait racing down Creswell Avenue.

My dad and I got up at 7 to try and beat the heat on a ride to Shreveport's Farmer's Market.

My dad on the vintage Raleigh I bought him for his birthday/father's day.

The ride was a lot of fun. The Farmer's Market turned out to be not that bad either. It was bigger than I expected though not so well attended. 

 

  

 

 I got a peach pie and a $3 smoothie made in a vintage Vita-mixer 3600 or 4000. The mixer was probably over 30 years old; my dad recognized what it was. Both of these food items were excellent. And there was a lot more to try but I'm a man of limited means. All in all it was a pretty good reminder that life here isn't always so murderous. The rest of the day I worked on the Peugeot, which is slowly winning me over.

 

Damaged axle.

Dirtiest freewheel ever soiled by man?

Rim before.

 Rim after some steel wool and machine oil.

 

 Just a few more hours and new parts...

I'm a sucker for loose bearings.

I consider myself very lucky for the relationship I've had with my father. My father was an aircraft mechanic (and an existential hero*) and I was a god-damn fool the day I thought I'd end up anything better through hard work and education. In my youth my father taught me tools and how to fix various engines and to do automotive repair. Apart from his nagging after me about my clothes (I could wear a pair of jeans so eaten up by brake fluid that my testicles were hanging out and my dad would still ask me why I was ruining “good clothes” changing my oil in them) learning these skills has proved invaluable in my personal life. I cannot begin to estimate how much money I've been able to save repairing things myself; which is good because I am perpetually unemployed and always flat broke.

When in adulthood I returned to riding bikes I was lucky enough to have the skills to maintain them myself. One of the ways in which I do that is by taking apart, cleaning, and repacking the bearings at least once a year. I have not, as of yet, owned a bike with sealed bearings and to be completely honest I think I would miss being able to do this. I read time and again about how much smoother and longer lived sealed bearings are but I wonder if that is not due to the laziness of owners grown lax in their maintenance, for if there is one thing in this life you can always count on it is the laziness of man. I also wonder if anyone actually keeps a bike long enough anymore for the life span of loose bearings to be worn-out. Personally I'm not convinced. On a long enough time line the survival rate for every bearing drops to zero. Even your fancy sealed bearings will die a raspy grinding kind of death and you won't have had the pleasure of knowing them intimately inside and out. That being said I wouldn't kick a bike out of bed just for being equipped with sealed ones.

Recently I was lucky enough to witness the ravages of neglect on an unsealed bearing firsthand. I was invited to the house of a friend who I knew biked but had never seen her ride. I asked to see her bike and was informed that it was no longer in working order. I wanted to see it anyway and offered to fix it if I was able. Lead into the garage I found a cruiser roughly thirty years old that had been rescued from a trash heap. On her last outing there had been a catastrophic failure in the drive train portion of the bike. I don't know what failed first and precipitated its other problems but the chain had come off, a spoke had been broken, the arm of the coaster brake had broken free and lost its bracket that connected it to the frame, and the cones had come so loose that the wheel had about a half inch of play back and forth on the rear axle. After picking up some parts from my house I got to work and was able to fix it after an hour or so. Then I went for a test ride to make sure the chain tension was right and that the coaster brake was operating correctly (I didn't want her to smash her pretty little face). All of that checked out and I was amazed to discover the thing was almost completely un-steerable. She was apparently oblivious to this and said it had always been that way. So I offered to take a look at the headset too. After I got the grocery basket off the front end I got the headset out. The top races and bearing were fine but the bottom cage was ground flat and had only one ball bearing left that promptly fell and rolled away to the dark recesses of the floor. Luckily she had another (donor) bike from the trash that I was able to take the races and bearings off of. I doubt it will fare any better in this application though. I also doubt the longevity of a sealed bearing suffering the same amount of neglect.

This is what passes for a headset bearing in North Louisiana.

* The crowning achievement of my philosophy career was a paper I wrote in college all about how my father had awakened the nausea of ultimate responsibility in me by berating me for knocking a charcoal grill and some steaks over. I got a B on it.