a life a bicycle

I never would have thought it possible, but I think I could write a book about my bicycle. It wouldn’t be one of those naff Thomas the Tank Engine books, after all, how could you write a story about a bicycle. “Boris the Bicycle pulled up to the kerb and toppled over…” can’t really go anywhere with that. I was thinking more about a catalogue of failures and repairs that I have experienced since I walked up to the bicycle emporium and handed over the princely sum of 8 quid for my steed. Tall enough for someone of my gait, but still low enough I can get my feet on the ground in a hurry. It was a match made in heaven.

I think I suffered my first mechanical failure within a week when the pedal snapped off. This has happened with such recurring regularity that I tend to consider such events as normal wear and tear. It’s the parts you see, the problem isn’t that they don’t make them like they used to, but rather that they still do; any industry that is set up to be a monopoly and then overseen by the government is not generally noted for its attention to quality.

Until I stumbled up the bike shop I currently use I was relying on the handiwork of a geezer who thought everything could be solved by a spot of welding. Why screw something on if you can weld it? I suspect he would take a similar approach to pretty much anything; kids playing up? Weld them inside the bedroom. World hunger? Have a drop of molten metal to take the edge of your appetite.

Recently though, I was beginning to think that the bike might finally be reaching the end of the road. It had got to a point where the chain was spending less time on the chainring and more time dragging along the rain soaked and crap covered road. I began eyeing up slinky new numbers at the bike shop around the corner, the official vendor of Flying Pigeon bicycles. For 30 quid I could have a shiny new number with plastic bubble wrap still taped around the frame.

Two weeks back I was riding home so I could pick up a taxi to head to the airport for a flight to Hong Kong and ultimately on to the UK. The chain had already dropped off three times when suddenly the back wheel locked and the bike slewed across the wet road and into the path of passing traffic (this is one of the reasons I keep the saddle so low, the bike goes down but you are left standing – albeit sometimes in the path of an high speed dump truck)

This time I was fortunate enough not to find myself looking at the radiator of a overloaded car transporter or a humpity bumpity army truck and lifted the bike to the side of the road for an inspection. The chain had been mysteriously sucked up into the box surrounding the whole chainring and rearcog assembly and it was clear it wasn’t coming out in a hurry. I rapidly decided i couldn’t be arsed and freewheeled the bike home, dumped it under the stairwell at my apartment and headed to the airport

11,200 miles (200 of which were back and forth across the Southdowns on my mountain bike), and several pork pies and cheese and pickle sandwiches later I was back in Wuhan viewing the dusty heap of rust I had come to call a bike. It never fails to surprise me how quickly dirt accumulates in this city, it looked like my bike could have been parked under the stairs since the early Song dynasty.

Despite the jetlag and pouring rain I decided to take my bike to a shop where they wouldn’t view a few hard wallops with a sledgehammer to be a solution, or would weld the chain to the chainring in a moment of inspiration. I had to freewheel it the whole way, with my right foot on the pedal and the left foot propelling me along. Not the most effective way to travel, but what surprised me was I was still overtaking some cyclists who were in possession of a bike with functioning pedals and drivetrain, although I hesitate to pass comment on the state of the brakes.

“I cannae fix it mon” said the bloke at the bike shop who, while not a Geordie, possessed an Mandarin accent which was surely the equivalent. “Of course ye ken” I replied in a poor approximation of the local dialect “have at it mon” I instructed, throwing in a “hawaeyelads” for good measure.

Thirty minutes later, while I had a totally unintelligible exchange with the bloke cutting sheet metal in the shop next door which wasn’t helped by him using the power saw while he was talking, the bike was fixed. I paid up, thanked the guyand rode off down the road.

The chain fell off before I got to the corner. I pushed the bike back to the shop.

We finally figured out that the rear axle had worked its way loose, ejecting several of the bearings. This had caused the back wheel to move forward in the frame and, since the crankset was moving left to right with similar gay abandon, this was causing the chain to drop off on every pedal stroke.

By tightening down the rear axle so the wheel was barely rotating, moving the wheel back in the frame and locking down the nut with a hammer, the chain was so tight the crankset couldn’t wobble. All the parts were locked together in perfect harmony and under excessive strain every turn of the pedals. At some point in the future I am expecting the chain toshatter, showering pedestrians and small animals with small metal fragments. It’s the sort of insighful China story you might read about in the Daily Telegraph.

The guy in the bike shop seemed quite pleased by the results of our combined efforts. Job well done and all that. He sent me off with a “there you go mon” and watched me ride off down the road until the groans and strains from unlubed metal against metal was out of earshot.

This morning the single bolt holding the basket in place sheared, dropping it under the front wheel.

Author: cyanide bunny

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