Brake Dancing

First of all, sorry about that title. What a dreadful pun.

A few years ago somebody gave me a bike. Specifically, a Peugeot road bike. I don't know the reputation or status of Peugeot bikes. This one has a "Made in France" sticker on the top tube, which could be considered a conversation starter. But it's got really cheap components.

I'm no mechanic – but even I can tell that. So it's my guinea pig bike.

The other day I continued my experiments in bike mechanics. I put the bike into my new-used bike stand – another item somebody gave to me! – and began taking apart the rear brake. In this first photo, the procedure has already begun with the removal of the brake cable and the center-pivoting nut that attaches the thing to the bike.

Next, I have removed one of the brake calipers. The picture is a bit fuzzy – auto-focus is not infallible! (I took pictures because I thought I might mess up the job, and wanted a step-by-step record, in case I needed a reference when I re-assembled everything.)

In the picture at right I have removed the other brake caliper. Behind it are the springs which push the two calipers back into position. You may not be able to tell in this picture, but when you remove it – it just lifts right out – this spring unit resembles those old-fashioned pincher eyeglasses.

At left, the spring has been removed. Perhaps you can make out the slot that holds the spring in place. It's on that circular thing. Right behind it is a bracket that holds a reflector (just visible). At this point, the brake disassembly is nearly complete.

Photo at right: same as before, different angle. When I put the brake back together I wavered about putting the reflector back on. Since my daughter is the one most likely to ride this bike, I did.

In the center of the above-right picture is a nut. I unscrewed it. And then, as you can see below, the remaining screw slid right out of that mounting hole. At that point I cleaned the entire area (using diluted Simple Green and a rag), congratulated myself, and began putting it all back together. I did indeed need the photos as a reference in places. But I got it all back together and it works.

Scenes Along the Road – a little more

I've got a few more observations, and a few more pictures, that I'd like to put up here, as another cycling season nears its end. (This is a continuation of a previous post.)

Yours Truly in the middle of a century ride, some years back

There are those who will tell you that the bicycle is the greatest invention ever, but I’m not one of them. Not because I don’t believe it (I’m not sure I do, though I’m close) but because of my reluctance to speak in absolutes. Isn’t the wheel touted as the greatest invention ever? And bikes have two of them! But then, cars have four, and semi-trailers have god knows how many. Does that make them exponentially better?

Whatever. I am content to say that the bicycle is among the greatest machines ever developed, and leave it at that.

“The bicycle is a curious vehicle,” someone once observed. “Its passenger is its engine.” And this is one of the things that make bikes great: they allow you to travel point-to-point and, as its engine, get some exercise while you do it.

“Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish,” Iris Murdoch declared, in The Red and Green. “Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.”

Pure in heart. Since bikes are fuel-free, they are environmentally sound. Between planet-threatening emissions and fluctuating gas prices, there may never be a better time than now to dump the car and embrace human powered transportation as the ideal way to get where you need to go.

There is a magnificent silence to bicycles that has enormous appeal for me. This may be most evident when riding, as I often do, through rural areas in the early hours of a summer morning. The only sounds are the steady clicking of bike’s freewheel, and the occasional warbling of a meadowlark. These are what I think of as bicycle moments.

Bicycle moments. Often they are fleeting, but they speak directly to the bike’s purity of heart: moments of blissful quietude that you can only experience on two wheels.

Of course, for a lot of people bike season is not ending. Community Cycles, mentioned in a previous post, holds workshops on winter cycling. But much as I love them, bicycles have their limitations. Few are willing to pedal to work in sub-freezing temperatures. Biking to the airport to pick up grandma and her three suitcases is out of the question. But for running simple errands around town, bikes – weather permitting, of course – are ideal.

The best thing about bicycles, though, may be that they are just plain fun to ride.

Scenes Along the Road

Late September. I’m not in quite the shape I’d like to be, vis a vis the bicycle.

But I’m a-tryin’. I’m out there turning the cranks as often as possible. And I keep passing interesting things along the way, like the buffalo at right.

There haven't been any wild buffalo in the American west for a long, long time, so far as I know. Maybe a few stray here and there.

The beast seen here is one of a herd off Nelson Road in northern Boulder County, Colorado, not too far from where my daughter takes riding lessons. In all likelihood, this critter is destined to end up as a buffalo burger, or a steak on someone's plate.

The herd was right up along the side of the road when I passed it in a car on the way to my daughter's lesson. But by the time we had her saddled up and I had ridden my bike back, they had moved away from the fence. I didn't have a zoom lens, but I think this picture looks okay.

And how about this sign? I think its most important line is, "we load for you." Yeah, the cow manure is organic. That's very good to know, in this green and golden era.

But, we load for you. Oh yeah. That's what really counts.

Bikes have been on my mind a lot lately. I shall spend the balance of this post writing whatever I think about them, and illustrating it with additional photos that I've taken during the course of one ride or another. I always take along a small digital camera when I ride.

I'm trying to learn some bicycle mechanics, so that I become less dependent on the local bike shop. (The shop I most often haunt is Louisville Cyclery.) Toward that end, I've gone to a few workshops at Community Cycles, a very cool cycling cooperative not too far from where I live.

Just recently, in fact, I took a shifters and derailleurs class there. So emboldened was I, that afterward I replaced the shifter cables to the front derailleur on my guinea pig bike, an old Peugeot that someone gave to me a few years back. Then I changed the brake cables on my wife's bike.

Work like this is small potatoes to those who know what the hell they're doing. It's still a big potato for me, although I almost feel like I know what I'm doing.

Aside from the workshops, my chief inspirations and guides include the web site of the late Sheldon Brown, a bike mechanics guru of some renown. I'm also guided by Lennard Zinn, a frame builder who has written several very useful bike repair books – titled, rather predictably, Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance (and ...of Mountain Bike Maintenance).

For the time being, it's going to be brakes and derailleurs. So far I've limited myself mostly to cables, although I'm fiddling with the brake levers on that guinea pig bike. Someone gave me an old Park Tools bike stand (people keep giving me stuff!) ... so I'll move on to other areas of the bike, in due time.

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(I made a post similar to this one early this summer.)