purse technician.. my hero!
February 16th, 2008Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain — at least in a poor country like Russia — and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
–Leon Trotsky
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A link for Erik, and one for Greg.
It looks like my newest job title is “purse technician”.
A woman came in the shop very proud of her thrift-shop score, the new purse which she insisted we all come and have a look at. Except.. shoot, the shoulder strap on it wasn’t connected to brass rings correctly.
“Sure I could try to fix that..”
And she walked back and stood right next to me me as I clamped it in the vise and grapped the channel locks. She kept a close eye as she told me about how it’s hard getting by on social security, and what’s this thing called?
“This? It’s called a vise.”
‘Oh I need to get one.. how much is one of those?’
“Ah Jeez, probably over a hundred bucks, unless you found a used one, and maybe it’d be about 50 or so.”
‘Well I think I’ll be buying myself a vise then.’
She badly wanted to know where she could go to get herself a vise and I gave he directions to Kent’s Tools. And she seemed really happy with how her purse turned out.
It’s all in a day’s work for.. purse repairman. And then more fun when the rep Brian brought in a demo bike — the Marin Quake XLT.
Somehow on the test ride, I ended up on a loading dock, but fortunately I found a way off it.
And then the cavalcade of randomness continued, when we got in a new MP3 player that’s in a seat bag made for bikes. After discovering the thing possessed quite a lot of bump, I cranked up ‘Angel of Death‘ by Slayer and headed out to 4th ave on an Electra Pajama Party.
It was so much fun I had to convince a couple others to go and take it out w/ the Slayer at full blast. PAJAMA PARTY OF DEATH!!!
R.I.P. Sheldon “laughing compasssionate bike guru” Brown
February 5th, 2008“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean”. –David Searls
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Rest in peace, Sheldon Brown 1944-2008.
When I heard the news yesterday I was at the shop, and I found out that each of my co-workers knew a lot about Sheldon — even knowing that he was having health problems — and apparently all of us have spent hours pouring over his webpages. One coworker said if it weren’t for Sheldon he probably wouldn’t have become a bike mechanic.
I wonder how bike geeks can ever replace him… you don’t get a guru like this too often. His site has over 1000 pages of detailed information, and the caliber of it all, brought forth with his intelligence and humor, seems untouchable.
I never met him, but I suppose we were under the same roof at Interbike recently. Once I ordered a pair of tires from him (Avocet clinchers for my Herse) and I got the impression of a very sweet and patient guy. I’m thinking maybe his mission was to serve others and spread bikes far and wide.
Thank you Sheldon!
fragment from a year ago
January 3rd, 2008“I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again.”
– Michelle Pfeiffer
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Considering that I wasn’t having very much fun, I don’t know why I bothered writing this time capsule of the big crunch time last year. With the deadline looming a few days away here was ‘a day in the life of Mookie’:
I woke up in my freezing house and look out to find the clear blue sky I needed for taking my bike photos. Some coffee and I wait until the prime hour for photos — 11AM — and took a bunch of pics of my SC.
Back inside for a photoshop session. Some great shots. But my mouseclicking wrist acts up, and the house just seems colder.
I go and have a burrito the size of my forearm. Sunny and warm, sitting outside feeling jealous of all the cyclists. Beautiful Tucson winter riding weather. I saw roadies and mtn bikers out, Freds in neon chartreuse, plus the “good” students riding to school to keep working through the holiday, plus bike cops and homeless w/ the Sanford and Sons pannier improvisations. Thinking about my mere 6 days to go I start to feel good about it all, even if I’m off the bike. Next year I’m gonna stretch that goddamned chain until it’s a quarter mile long….
Waddle back on to my bike and back home to make another page.
Hey what’s this for?
December 31st, 2007from a New York Times article about the Oxford English Dictionary:
“I like, for example, the Shorter’s definition for “mook” (“a stupid or incompetent person”) with an illustration from Spike Lee, “Who are you gonna listen to, me or that mook?”
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Happy solstice and new year, amigos~!
Since this 43bikes crapfest is itself the product of a New Year’s resolution (in 2006), I’ll take this second to reflect. It looks like my ‘07 resolution unfolded perfectly — which was to turn off the computer and go enjoy being outside. In fact I can boast of having completed very little work all around.
I haven’t found much that surpasses some of that good ol’ chain stretching. Like yesterday, going out on the Baylis and soaking up 6 hours of winter sun with my friend Kazar.
Looking toward next year I still have 3 bikes yet to finish — my mom’s track cruiser, the gangster trike,
and my chopper.
So looks like that’ll be it, finishing the wacky custom bikes is going to be my resolution for ‘08. Plus I have some other little jobs around here (tightening up on the links page, and some new blogs, plus I think a page w/ Mavic resources seems in order).
As far as this 2007 that’s down the crapper now, what was the big news? Sometimes I forget just how cool it is that this was the year Tucson got a tuesday night bike ride happening every week. And the beauty of it is that it’s not a critical mass or any other kind of protest.
People on the street see us go by and yell “Hey, what’s this for?!” And the answer is that it’s for fun. It’s a community bike ride w/ up to 400 people and no agenda. We just want to ride and we’d rather not break any laws.
Some have remarked that it feels like a cocktail party rolling down the street, and also that it’s a rare occasion to be riding in the city and finally being able to let your guard down, feeling relaxed and safe. But the controversy has followed us..
After the “police crackdown” ride a couple months ago, with the arrest of the guy in the cow suit 
and making onto the cover of the Tucson Weekly, the ride has settled into an equilibrium that we all hope can sustain itself.
We are officially “policing ourselves” — you gotta have a front light, kids have to wear helmets, and all traffic laws apply. But a lot boils down to the one thing we do that is “not exactly completely legal” which is to cork intersections. The motorist at the light sees a huge dang parade of folks on bikes.. then the light turns red and them freaks are still going by, and dagg-gum it the light changes back to green and then red again. Some call 911, fueled by the rage of missing their motoring and shopping or their 1000 calorie rituals in front of supersized TV altars.
But how about if we got off and walk our bikes at a crosswalk instead? It’s _much_slower, and it’s completely legal. Yikes, I couldn’t believe the mess we made when we did that once, and that wasn’t even trying to block the street for a long time.
The point is that we on the ride all agree we want to it continue, and that it won’t help us if we go around pissing people off. We think of this as a permanent thing here. I like to dream of it developing into something like what they have in Colombia, where they close down 70 miles of streets for human powered vehicles or even like those dang French, where cruising around on bikes is turning into a big part of their dating scene.
I think it seems like the message successfully made it into the weekly article, with quotes like:
“I feel like something special is happening right now in Tucson. This is a part of it, but I feel there’s going to be more.”
A different friend who was quoted in there told me that the writer came on one of the rides, and was deeply moved but how cool it was. In any case, she ended her story w/ this quote from my friend Erik, saying “Sometimes, I feel that bicycles could solve all of our problems,”
Heck yes buddy!
