Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. Louis Shalako.

 

Borrowed image, for the purposes of training and other scholarly purposes.

Louis Shalako

Zen, and the Manly Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.

It really does something for the male psyche to take something apart and put it back together again. And it works better than it did before.

There is the challenge of manual dexterity, there is the psychological component. It is a mental challenge as much as anything, a test of character.

And I do want to ride that bike. I could live without creaks and groans from the bottom end, and the chain skipping, right about when I need full power to get across a busy street.

Okay, so I had already disassembled the hub of the front wheel of the Trek 3700, 2.5” oversize frame mountain bike, cleaned everything, greased it with wheel bearing lubricant, and reassembled it.

#men

I had the rear wheel of the mountain bike on the table, the shaft and the bearings and the gears removed. With a dab of grease on the end of a small screwdriver, I had set eight out of nine 3/16" ball bearings into the race when the ninth went a little too far, now it's stuck in the middle of the hollow part of the wheel hub. The grease acts as a kind of glue, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. I had a hell of a time getting that out. I gave it up for a while, sat in the living room, and let the dull roar from the lower back simmer down. I’ve done this job before, in fact I have changed a bent shaft after dropping off a curb at a relatively low speed.

The front wheel has shocks, the rear wheel does not.

I might have been a little rough with it.

The problem was no clearance for that last ball, and yet I have counted those little steel balls several times. So, I used the tip of the screwdriver and shoved the balls in their race a bit to the left and a bit to the right. Having finally recovered aforesaid ball, I managed to get that one in. Now it's time to flip the wheel and try the other side, which is easier because it's just like both sides of the front wheel—no inset, deep in a hollow of the gear-set, where I can't see a damned thing. Nine balls in there, nicely set in nice, fresh wheel bearing lubricant, to use a technical term. Carefully sliding the gears on their shaft in from the right side, the tip of the threaded axle shaft came out the left side without disturbing the embedded balls on that side. Now, all I had to do was to screw in the left side cone and the bearings at least are complete. Tomorrow, I will put that back on the bike and install the front and rear brake pads. And I am at peace.

***

So. The front brakes were good—maybe even a little too good. The rear brakes were shit, which means you are depending on those front brakes. Ergo, I swapped the front pads for the rear pads and vice versa. There are some little adjustment screws on the cables, and I could mess with them as well.

I'm toying with the idea of pulling the main crank and cleaning that out. That one will take a good-sized cold chisel and a hammer, as I don’t have a gear puller. A little WD-40 soaking overnight might help, otherwise we might just leave that one for another day.

***

The black plastic gears described in the text are upper left. Then there are the two plates that hold them together.

This is the derailleur of my Trek mountain bike. I have pulled (19), which is a black plastic gear, with two flanged washers, and a stainless steel insert. I sprayed them with WD-40 and began cleaning, in fact scraping with a small screwdriver. This minor assembly is held in position by a hex-drive, countersunk machine bolt. Number 17 will be essentially the same, bear in mind that the chain went behind 19, it is 'in front' of 17. As far as the scraping went, there were something like fourteen years of dirt and grease on those gears, or, for about as long as have I owned this bike; or ever since I got into this three-floor walk-up in the central city. At some point I will drag the bike down three flights and give it a go in the real world. In the meantime, it's an interesting project. Not so much mechanical aptitude, but psychological attitude. It's a mental challenge. I do a little bit every day, watch Youtube tutorials when necessary, and the job will get done. In that sense, the story took a few days to write. First I had to get the hands dirty and figure this shit out…

#zen

So, if you think about it, 17 comes out using the same countersunk machine bolt or screw.

The metal pressed part, 18, will actually rotate out of the way in order to pull the gear.

Okay, I've pulled gear 17 and will proceed to clean that up and put it back in.

#bicycles

It's the upper gear in the derailleur.

***

I had to take it apart and put it together at least three or four times, and yet there is really only one way to get the chain through the derailleur. I even mentioned in a previous paragraph, the chain goes 'behind' the lower black plastic gear, and 'in front' of the upper gear. (It's not like I didn't know that.) I had the bike upside down, and of course the thing is spring loaded, you've got the chain off the front sprockets, and it's in the retracted position. I'm half bent over and my glasses are hanging off the nose. I have the little gear in one hand, the machine screw in the other hand, along with the hex key, and I was using my extreme manual dexterity, all five fingers and very large hands, just to align the front and back parts of the assembly, all the while squeezing the gear in and not losing the inside washer for the tenth time. You have to do all of this while pulling outwards and extending the derailleur…a third hand is what you need, in other words. Now all you got to do is get the screw through the hole...

The author's machine

So, I did the front wheel one day, the rear wheel the next. I did the bottom gear on the derailleur one day, and the upper gear the next.

I reckon before taking that down and trying it out, we’ll go over it in terms of lubricating the chain, anywhere there is a rotating part, a bearing, a bushing, anything that pivots. It cannot help but to be better than it was before.

One thing at a time, right.

 

END

 

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Here he is on Bluesky.

 

How to Silence Common Bike Noises.

How to Grease Your Bearings.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Cycling With An Upper Back Injury

Carlemere, (Wiki.)

Louis Shalako

I’ve been having some problems in between my shoulder blades. There’s a nagging spot in the neck, and some pain in the right shoulder. Tonight it’s the left shoulder…

In some instances, it’s so bad that it leads to chest-encircling pain that is intense, enough so that years ago, I got checked out for heart problems.

As I write this, there is some pain in the left shoulder, right up against the vertebral column. If I could see back there, there’s probably some swelling right about there. I have been riding a bit lately, going out for an hour or more after supper, for several days in a row. Call it about ten or twelve k, as I’m really not going that fast.

I’m just some old guy grinding along.

The sports doctors talk about triggers.

***

It seems that psychological stress is one of the triggers. That’s because under stress, the shoulders and upper back muscles tend to tense up, and I already have a pre-existing injury. 

That kind of stress is also present in my environment.

With three compression fractures, the one at T-6 is the one involved here. (The others are L-3 and L-4.)

T-6 is in the thoracic vertebra, and there is a 2.5 cm hemangioma growing on the left side of the posterior-lateral process. I don’t know if that one is related to the original injury or not, but it’s definitely there.

Stress leads to inflammation, inflammation leads to pressure on the nerve, pressure on the nerve leads to pain.

There are tell-tales and warning signs, which are better not to ignore. I don’t think riding is the actual problem, although it can certainly irritate it. Riding the bike tends also to strengthen the muscles of the neck, upper back, shoulders, arms, etc. Early in the season, our wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck can tire quickly. In winter I do some walking, but virtually nothing in terms of upper body exercises.

In summer, I walk, cycle and swim, but early in the season it’s obviously not quite so much fun. The body just plain deteriorates over a long winter, sitting in a chair, clicking away with the right hand exclusively on the mouse. There is the question of how much pain we are willing to put ourselves through, early in the season, for some perceived gain later in the season, also our general fitness for next winter will benefit…right?

One of the things I do is just to slow down. Sit up, and ride with no hands, which unloads the neck and that crimp in the back the sports doctors talk about. I’m not out to beat the Russians. 

I stop and have a smoke, stand around and drink from my water bottle once in a while.

OpenStax College, (Wiki.)

So far this year, I have not been in the water, and we are sort of looking forward to that—the first few times will redefine the notion of pain, as the water tends to be chill at the best of times and the season is short enough around here.

The thing there is to take it easy. An injury that isn’t allowed to heal is just going to spoil the whole season, not just for biking but swimming as well. I injured my right knee back in 2012, about mid-July, and that one took a whole year before I could really use it with total confidence. If you’re getting little twinges out of it, just going up a couple of flights of steps on a cold winter day, that’s a tell-tale.

The author is 56 years old, 197 cm, about 85 or 90 kilos, not particularly athletic, and has prior injuries. My bike has a 2.5” oversized frame, and worth every penny it was, too.

Your own circumstances and state of health might be different. Be careful out there and enjoy it as best you can.

END

The Wall. When Ego Writes the Cheques.

(File photo.)

by Louis B. Shalako 

On May 8, 2009 I learned a sharp lesson in humility. Setting out twenty minutes before twelve p.m. on a mild and sunny spring day, I pedaled my over-sized mountain bike out of the city. I followed Sarnia’s Howard Watson Trail, heading north and then east in the direction of Bright’s Grove and ultimately Camlachie, a small, rural, beach-front community at the south end of Lake Huron.

If it got too much for me I could turn around and go back. Within an hour and a half I was turning up the driveway. I had promised someone that I would come out and look at a small basement renovation he had on the go. We sat outside on the patio and had a Coke, and a cigarette. After an hour or so it was time to go.

The trip is about twenty-three kilometres each way. After two kilometres of pedaling homewards, I was in trouble. Deep trouble. I had no energy, and worse, the pain was burning in the large muscles of my upper thighs. My heart was okay, but it simply wouldn’t go any faster. I could feel all of my torso moist and wet with sweat, and my lungs didn’t seem to be providing enough oxygen. I kept slowing down, and cursed the developing blue band of low rain clouds on the horizon. The wind was straight in my face and gusting, but blowing at an average speed of about thirty kilometres an hour. My wrists hurt, my elbows hurt, my shoulders hurt…the trail is nothing if not level, yet even the gentlest incline seemed beyond me.

And I still had twenty-one kilometres to go. You could say I learned a little bit about suffering out there. The temperature had fallen to twelve or fourteen degrees Celsius, just enough to make the sweat uncomfortably cold. My legs burned with pain all the way home, all of it self-inflicted. The trip took about one hour and forty-two minutes.

I must have gotten off the bike a dozen times, I was so tired I couldn’t ride it. I’d walk a hundred metres while my heart slowed down, and my breath caught up to me. But as soon as I got on again, it only took fifty or a hundred metres for my energy to burn out again. I'm lucky my friend filled up my one-litre water bottle for me. The amazing thing is that I managed to average a whopping thirteen kilometres an hour, or about eight miles an hour. Twice walking speed. God, I thought I would never get home.

That last kilometre, I walked at least half of the way. It was a kind of death-march, out there. Yet I managed to ride up my own street, and put the bike away, et cetera. There was one cold beer in the fridge, in answer to all my prayers.

I learned a few lessons out there. I have more grit and determination than I often give myself credit for. I guess you could say that the margin between victory and defeat can be razor thin—although I was competing against my own stupidity. On any given day, the winners probably hurt more than the losers. The winners were the ones who dug deep, and scraped the bottom of that barrel until they came up with some spongy and discoloured oak shavings, making fuel for further efforts.

I was totally unprepared. A month of proper training might have helped. That was an Olympian ride, for me. I was walking funny for about a week. The pain and stiffness eventually went away. I can’t remember the last time I really hit the wall. It is a profound learning experience, one I won’t forget any time soon. There was just no way I was going to lay down beside the trail and patiently await rescue by passers-by. There was no way I was going to walk up to someone’s door and ask to use the phone. I just couldn’t allow myself to be humiliated like that.

Ego is not necessarily an unhealthy thing. It was my ego that wouldn’t let me quit. But that day, my ego wrote a check that just barely cleared.

Cycling for health and wellness.

(Morguefile)

When I bought my first new bike a few years ago, it was because I wanted to get back in touch with something I lost long ago. I wanted to get in touch with my youth. It must have been a reaction to being forty-something, but youth, the energy of youth, the optimism, the adventurousness of youth, that is a very precious thing.

We lived on our bikes. From a very early age, my buddy and I used to ride out to the airport. We would check the schedule and wait for the twin-engine planes to land, disembark their passengers, and with a roar and a puff of blue smoke, fire up the old Pratt & Whitneys for another take-off. There’s not too many piston-engined airliners around these days.

The first bike I bought as an adult was a Supercycle Inferno, a mountain bike with a nice big frame. The geometry was far different from the highly-stable ten speed racing bike that I grew up on, or the cast-off six-speed commuter bike that I had been riding until a couple of cables broke and the cost of repair got too high. I started off riding around in a tennis court. It took a long time before I was able to ride with no hands.

It had been that long since I rode, but the three compression-fractures at L-3, L-4 and L-6 might have had something to do with being totally out of shape. My lungs were bad, my legs were bad, and everything hurt. I kept at it, and worked my way up a few kilometres at a time. The summer I turned forty-eight, I rode sixty kilometres round trip in about three and three-quarter hours. I hurt for a week afterwards, but I did it.

I wore that bike out in about two and a half years. At that point, I bought a Matterhorn, an all-steel frame Raleigh mountain bike. The machine was stiff, I’ll give you that much, but the frame seemed to be very short-coupled after riding the Supercycle. It was also heavy and too small for me.

By that time, I was much stronger, and so I wore that bike out, a machine which cost about $125.00 Cdn, in a year and a half. At some point the repair shop guy tells you, “Nine bucks for a gear cluster, twenty-five bucks for a chain, eight bucks each for two cables, twenty-three bucks for a tire, forty bucks for a rim…” and the conclusion quickly drawn is that a new cheap bike is actually cheaper and ultimately more satisfying than fixing up an old cheap bike, bearing in mind that it will never be really right again. That’s because old cheap bikes become loose all over, need bearings re-packed, new cables, new brakes, new tires, new seat…et cetera.

So then I bought a Trek 3700. Mine has a two and a half inch oversized frame. At first, it was like I was swimming on that bike. Seriously, after the too-small Raleigh, and even the Supercycle, which was a relaxed-stability revelation at the time, this bike is the first one in my entire life that actually fits me. The bike cost just under $400.00. It took five or six months to pay off my credit card. It was worth it.

This is my fourth summer riding it. It was pretty warm around here in late winter, and while riding in six or eight degree Celsius temperatures can be a character-building experience, it also gave me a chance to train up a little bit for summer. So far today, I have visited my dad in the old age home, (north end,) dropped off some mail, (downtown,) and stopped in at my brother’s place, (south end.) Then I rode home, and at this point I’m up to sixteen or seventeen kilometres for the day.

The only reason I came home was to make a couple of hamburgers, otherwise I would have gone to the beach—which from here might be another fourteen k’s or so. The bike has its limitations. Sometimes, coming home with forty pounds of groceries slung on the handlebars into a stiff breeze is hard work and a tough ride. Heavy rain is a bit of a downer. It’s cheap to operate, and since I never run anywhere, it will have to do. (I don’t run for nothing and nobody.)

I may not really be able to recapture my youth, but this is one good way to make my golden years a little less miserable. Nobody likes getting old, so a little procrastination can be a good thing sometimes.

Sometimes my knees hurt, and my lower back is a little stiff and sore the last couple of days, but some folks just wouldn’t be happy unless they had something to complain about, you know?

Here’s a previous post entitled, ‘Cycling is Therapeutic.’

For more information on the benefits of cycling as therapy, check this out.

(Morguefile)

New Post: Cycling is Therapeutic.

c2011Shalako


I injured my right knee back in August of 2009. I did it swimming, which shouldn't be possible, at least for a fit or even a slightly younger person. A normal flutter kick shouldn't do that to you. It might have something to do with my doggy-paddling style, a sort of one-armed stroke designed to keep my smoke up out of the water.

With a few weeks of downtime, and autumn fast approaching, I didn't get too many kilometres of cycling in that year.

I never walk farther than about a kilometre, incidentally.

Along rolls 2010 and I was re-writing my first two novels, editing, reading, learning social networking, and editing...I've been in this chair pretty much continously for about a year and a half. That is to say when I wasn't sleeping, or eating, or taking a shower. Shoveling snow. You get the idea.

So last year, instead of cycling two or three thousand kilometres over the summer, it was more like...I don't know, maybe 600 k's all year.

Today I took my second bike ride of the season. I wore two shirts and two sweaters. The first couple of kilometres did hurt my right knee. My upper back and shoulders, my arms, my elbows, my wrists...my lower back and everything else.

After a while the pain went away and my wind wasn't as bad as I expected. The upper legs burn of course.

I felt eager. I really didn't put much power to it, but the right knee felt okay. I only went about five kilometres, and it was a nice spring day. 'No worries.'

It's not a matter of 'owing it to myself' or anything like that. My right foot is numb half the time and I now walk with a very distinct limp...this is a new thing for me and I don't like it very much. I need a new office chair something fierce.

Cycling is a necessity after all this time at my desk. In my opinion, my productivity and creativity will actually improve. Summer is for the living.

Cycling is for me.