You don't have to listen to these fixed gear fanatics

Thursday I decided, on a whim, to head out to work on my bike for a bit. I planned to spend an hour in it.

I took a streetcar and got a lot of reading done. I found an open stand and set up the bike. For this part where I chose the wheels I was hoping to work with Billy, though I knew he only came in on Saturdays. I had gotten some advice, but I still wasn't sure what to look for. I didn't know what differences the sizes made, what to look for in a hub, in spokes, in gears.

I recognized a guy that I met at a newly-opened outfitters store near my apartment. Dietrich was from Israel and when we first met he thought I was, too. He said he had heard about the shop and came by just to see it for himself. I told him what I was doing and he grabbed a wheel and stuck it on the front. He asked me what kind of gear I wanted and I told him I wasn't sure. He explained why he liked fixed gear bikes so much and as he looked at my bike he kept saying things like, "With the frame and cranks you have this bike can be crazy."

Dietrich was sorting through wheels and talking about fixed gear bikes when Marcos walked by and said, "You don't have to listen to these fixed gear fanatics."

Then a guy I'd seen before and heard about through a friend spoke up from behind a work bench.

"And if you get a fixed gear bike might as well get pedals with big teeth so when you go to stop it'll mess your leg up real good."

His name was Jack. He was a middle-aged man, thin, nearly bald and wearing a plain white t-shirt tucked into his p.e. coach shorts. As Dietrich continued looking for wheels Jack hobbled over. It seems his left leg and arm where at least partially paralyzed. Jack looked at the bike and said I could have it done and ride it home today if I wanted. I got excited and looked at the clock. It was already 5. I had planned to leave by then.

But I followed Jack around as he found wheels he liked and picked them up with his right hand. We tried a wheel or two. The first, when we got to the device that tests the true-ness of the wheel, how straight it is when you spin it, the wheel was really bent. We found another that looked better. Jack said I should pass it by Marcos or Maria first, since they knew best.

I'd never seen Maria before. I walked up to her with the wheel and she said she wasn't working today. I looked for Marcos but he was busy. I looked at the wheel I had. I had three gears. Dietrich had shown me his bike, it had one gear, and he said his combinations of 42 and 18 was fine for his work commute from Carrollton to Mid City. But what I wanted, I realized, was three gears. I wanted at least a few options. Plus, I wanted to learn how the shifters worked.

Dietrich had already left by this point and it was already almost 6, so I decided I'd go home for the day and try again Saturday. I put up my bike and walked out the door. Jack was smoking and sitting on carton that was holding the door open. I said bye and thanks for the help and headed for the streetcar. I passed Marcos and Maria talking.

"You walkin'?" Jack said.

I turned.

"Yeah, well, to the streetcar."

"I'm leavin' in a second, hold on."

We had realized that we lived in the same neighborhood and Jack had driven his 1980's Olds sedan with a bike rack on the truck. Jack went inside, saw there was nothing left he wanted to do, waved at no one in particular and we got in the car.

"I forgot my glasses," he said. He went back inside and I saw up at the corner Marcos and Maria holding each other. Then they kissed. A nice, long kiss.

I ran into Jack Saturday morning when I was walking my dog. He was riding his bike and I waved him down. He showed me his brake system, which he had begun describing at the shop. His was a road bike with the drop handlebars. He had two brake handles out front like you'd normally see, plus he had a third brake, a moutain bike-type brake, in the middle. He used his right hand on this brake, which was connected to his front wheel.

I had heard, when I was learning to mountain bike, that using the rear brake first was key, or else you could flip over.

"Well, if you stop quick no matter waht you fall over," he said. "Ninety percent of your breaking power comes from the front brake. The rear brake tends to slide."

it ain't gonna be nothin' nice

The next time I went in was the following Thursday. I drove there and found the shop was busy. All the bike stands were taken. I went over to the wall of parts and looked at the pedals. I asked one of the volunteers what to look for in a pedal and he said they're all basically the same. Some you add a strap to, some are wider, making it easier to keep your feet on.

There was a guy on the floor sorting through the cranks. I overheard him tell Marcos he couldn't find a 175 length to match one he found. I kept looking through the pedals, thinking that I was lucky to have found the pieces when I did. And feeling a little guilty. For no good reason, of course. First come, first serve. But I got that dang feeling inside that said, "Share your things, like a good boy."

He saw me holding a set of metal pedals and said they looked pretty good. And then he made me feel even more guilty by saying they were the ones he was going to be looking for when he got to it. I didn't know what to say.

"I was looking for 175s the other day and the only two I could find were mismatched," I said, though I'm not sure why. He had cranks all around him on the ground.

All the stands were still full so I took the pedals to the storage room in the back and screwed in the pedals into the hanging bike's cranks. They fit nicely.

Back in the shop I found an empty rack. I took down my bike and set it up. I spun the cranks and they whizzed in circles. I admired what I'd done so far.

The guy from the floor looked at it, too.

"You've got your cranks on the wrong sides," he said.

I found that hard to believe since I put them on with the help of four volunteers last Saturday. But he was right. I had put the gears on the left side, and even I could see that that was wrong.

I asked Marcos how to fix it. He said just switch the cranks, the bottom bracket was fine. He grabbed the tools and asked me if I knew how to use them. I assured him I did.

The switch was easy enough and it felt good to be able to fix something by myself. I ask Marcos what I should do next. He said I should find some wheels and pointed up where wheels of different sizes hung above our heads.

I wasn't sure what to look for in a good wheel. I looked for Marcos to ask him. I could hear him arguing with someone outside. It sounded like someone was trying to take something from the shop. This went on for a while and I wanted to get home soon so Bek and I could watch the finale of America's Next Top Model before went to a friend's for dinner and to watch the Hornet's game.

I put up my bike and went out to the car, parked near the door. There was Marcos working on a kid's bike. I recognized the kids from last Saturday, the kids who were spray painting their bikes. Marcos was on the ground and working furiously on something while arguing with the kid about something I couldn't quite understand.

I waited hoping to get Marcos' attention for a second to tell him thanks and that I'd see him next time, but he never saw me. There was a guy leaning on the door watching it all and a tiny black dog at his feet. The dog crept near me and I squatted. When it got close enough I scratched it's head and back. The guy at the door said something to Marcos and headed down the street. He called the dog and it followed him.

As I was leaving I heard the kid say something about his mother coming down here.

"It ain't gonna be nothin' nice," he said.

I drove away thinking about that and I felt sick. I hate confrontations. Witnessing them is probably worse than being part of them. When I'm in it I at least have some control. But I didn't know what was going to happen here. I feared something would actually happen, that this kids friends or family would come down and bully tiny Marcos over some misunderstanding.

This was the first time I'd left Plan B with a bad feeling, I realized.

did you get the crank working?

"I'm working on the bottom bracket today," I said to Bekah before I left for the shop.

Saturday was busier than Thursday, but I found an open stand in the corner and set up. Billy was there, and in the course of the day I met Ava, Cain and Zane. They all volunteered there.

If I haven't mentioned this before, I enjoy working with Billy. Maybe it's because he's an engineering grad student, but for whatever reason he loves to explain and elaborate on every little point of the bike.

With a little of all the volunteers' input, I gathered the correct-sized pieces for the bottom bracket. I cleaned them out until they shined. I used a small wire brush labelled "small wire brush" to clean out the grains of dirt in the threads, in the pieces and in the frame. Billy helped me find a good three-piece crank, the pedals, basically. I can't remember the names of all the parts, but they included a crank with replaceable gears, which was great, Billy said. Especially since these gears were dull. I could only find one crank of the same length for the other side, and length was about the only thing they had in common. One was black and rectangular and the other silver and flat. Whatever. Not thrilled but what I'm I gonna gripe for.

Before I put it together Billy gave me something to spray into the frame tube to keep them from rusting. I flipped the frame and sprayed until the stuff leaked out holes here and there. It also leaked out of the headset. I didn't like that so I tightened it up.

When I was sure I had the instructions right, I put the bottom bracket together, all greased up and clean. I asked Zane and Billy what they thought as they passed and they both said to tighten it up just right, not too tight so the cranks don't turn smoothly, and not too loose so that it all shakes. It was too loose, I noticed, so I pulled on the crank to give me access.

Didn't budge. I yanked. I knocked with a mallet.

"I can't get this off," I said to Billy.

He grabbed a tool and I realized it was just like the fly wheel puller I had bought when I was trying to fix up a Vespa. That didn't work out.

The part the crank fit on was tapered, Billy said, which was why the crank wouldn't budge. This tool popped it off. A few minuted later the guy next to me had the same problem so I gave him the tool but he couldn't get it to fit. I tried and so did one of the volunteers, Cain maybe, and he thought they needed a smaller tool, which they couldn't find.

Billy suggested I remove the smallest of three gears on my crank. Road bikes don't usually use them unless they're doing hills, he said, plus it was getting in my way when I wanted to adjust the tightness of the bracket...thing.

I removed it with an allen wrench but realized I couldn't find a wrench that would fit my bracket...thing. The special tool were all too big. Billy directed me to a tool chest and said there's all kinds of stuff in there. I found a size 28 wrench and voila, the stars were aligned in my favor. Zane checked it and said it was good.

Bek called around this time. She was picking me up to go shopping. I said I'd meet her on Elysian Fields, the boulevard two blocks away. I started to put things away. She called again.

"Where are you?" she said.

I gave her directions to the shop and hurried to put everything up.

She called again.

I was heading out the door and saw her. There were three kids spray painting their bikes. I had seen them in the shop earlier.

"I have to wash my hands first," I said. I turned around to head back in.

"Can I see it?" she said.

I was surprised. Of course, I said. She got to see the shop and I pulled down the bike for her.

"Nice," she said.

I washed my hands and we walked back to the car. Cain and Ava were sitting against the building.

"Did you get the crank working?" Cain said.

"Yeah, I did," I said.

this time i brought our camera

The following Thursday I returned, in our car, with the two chrome forks in the trunk. I remembered that I also had a set of handlebars in the trunk, handlebars I bought the first time I went to Plan B, sometime last year, with the idea that I would put them on my present bike. Never happened. Now I returned them.

The shop was not busy. I grabbed my bike, said hello to Marcos and set up the frame on a stand. This time I brought our camera. I took off the saddle and seat post. I stood back and captured the frame.

I checked all the headset pieces and they fit the new fork. I didn't think they would. For some reason I didn't think this would be so easy. I was getting the hang of it.

I tightened the headset, but not too much. Then I tightened the handlebars in place, though I realized they weren't in line with the fork. I left it for now.

I got the idea to change out the regular screw and nut that held the seat post with a quick-release type thing. I asked one of the guys, his name I don't know, if he thought that was a good idea.

"I want to change this out," I said, pointing. "I want, the, uh..." I couldn't figure out the word and this guy was not able to read my mind. Finally I found the words "quick-release" and he said he didn't see why not.

I looked for the pieces and ran across a filthy plastic bag I'd seen before but never examined. It was an unopened quick-release, I saw. I brought it over to the bike. This may not make sense to anyone else, but I felt bad opening that bag, tearing it open. It felt like a mixture of doing something wrong (I had this kid-like guilt telling me I should ask someone first) and a feeling that I wasn't worthy, that this had apparently lasted a long time and been through a lot and the person who opened it must be pretty dang important. Like it was the Holy Grail or something.

But it was just a quick-release thing. I put it on the seat post. Thought altogether it seemed a bit crooked, it tightened fine. I turned on the camera, stood back and snapped another shot.

we are closed for cleaning up

On Monday I had some free time so I decided to work on the bike a little.

"You'll be there till they close, won't you," Bek said.

"No, I just want to see if this new fork fits," I said.

I took my autoethnography book and two forks with me to read on the Jackson/Esplanade bus. At Rampart I got off and walked the nine blocks down tree-shaded Esplanade and across Elysian Fields. There was a wooden sign leaning on the open door to the shop:

"We are closed every first Monday of the month for cleaning up. But feel free to help."

Or something like that.

I walked in. There were two guys sitting on the ground working on rims. There was a stack of them in the middle of the shop. I saw the guy with the aquiline nose and asked him where I could help. He showed me the pile of rims and picked one up, saying I could try to save the spokes but that the rim would be scrapped. He showed me the tools to use, either a screw driver or a special tool that I couldn't figure out. He said his name was Marcos.

I found a chair and got started. It was quiet, where usually there was some sort of music coming from the cd player on the work table. Marcossaid someone broke in the night before and broke it.

I played Beck on my cell phone. It was louder than I thought it would be and I was really quite self-conscious that these guys would be judging me for my "pop" music. But maybe they liked it.

I worked on two, maybe three rims before I left. They took a while. I figured out how to use that special tool and my fingers and things went more quickly. Billy had asked me before if I was interested in building a wheel and I said why the hell not. I thought about that as I worked.

My cutting tools thank you

Like I said, I brought home two forks. See, as Plan B's alarm clock with its red stick numbers counted down to 6pm, Billy and I were looking at the head tube, the place the fork goes up into and the headset stem goes down into. Billy had stuck on some spacers and was screwing on a cap of sorts when he realized he couldn't screw in the fork all the way. I unscrewed it and he bent down to look. He slid the fork out and back in.

"There," he said. He pointed to a space where the threading ended. The threads were too short.

I ended up taking the fork to Mike's Bicycles on Frenchman, not far away. I tried to walk there, but I got lost. I finally drove down a crowded Frenchman after consulting a map, but still didn't find it. I ended up parking back at Plan B, walking to Frenchman and asking a cop who was watching over a street show at Tomatillo's.

Plan B had closed behind me, the two mopeds had come and gone and all the others. I still kind of work in a bubble, not knowing who works there and not talking to anyone but Billy.

Mike's is wall to wall bikes. Even the ceiling above the fan dangles wheels. I approached the guy behind the counter, a guy about my age, I'm 27, wearing a t-shirt that read "Employee of the Month," and I told him what I needed. He directed me to Tom, a man I'd passed when I walked in. He was talking to a guy I recognized from Plan B.

'How can I help you?" he said.

I told him and he started to rattle off prices:

"A dollar a thread..."

I told him to do whatever it takes. I had measured the head tube to be 8.7 inches and I told him so, to give him some idea.

He took the fork to the back and I waited. I was enjoying the collection of exciting sock-wear when a middle-aged couple came in. They wanted to rent bikes to ride to Jazz Fest. There were only two bike left, according to the guy at the counter, and they took them.

Tom came back with an identical fork he had found, only this one was threaded nearly halfway - more than I needed. I accepted it.

"My cutting tools thank you," he said.

He knocked off the crown (?) from the old fork and sautered it, I think, to the new fork. He had to look through a catalogue before he could charge me

"Twenty-one-oh-eight," he said.

This time Billy helped me

I went back two weeks later and was surprised to find my frame was still there. Hanging from a hook. I had spent the first day trying to unscrew the fork, which, I was told, was more than Joe, I think his name was, or John, could do. With some help from a skinny guy with beady eyes, we did it.

This second time Billy helped me. Willie isn't quite like the others. Where they may go shoeless, he wears athletic sandals. Where they wear cutoff shorts or stiched pants or thrift store dresses, he wears cargo shorts and a sleeveless T. Where their hair is dirty and wild, his is combed and clean. Of course, this is an inaccurate generalization.

Billy explained to me about the ball bearings in the head tube (here's a bicycle anatomy guide)and I spent that day finding parts that matched. At six they kicked us out but not before Billy gave me a lightweight drop handlbar and told me to grab a bag to put my goodies in.

Two weeks later I returned just to make sure the bike was there.

Today I brought my work home: two forks. Before that I put the bike up with a seat post and seat, ball bearings and a different set of handlebars (the lightweight didn't fit).

written 5.3.08

How to Build your own bike

written 3.29.08

A streetcar passed down Canal street and I was a block away. This happened to me the day before, and the next car came only a minute later. It was the weekend of the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and I had an all access pass because I, along with all the UNO Creative Writing students, helped judge the festival's one act play.

I had taken the streetcar to the French Quarter the day before, but today, though I had my pass inside a memo pad and the festival brochure inside my jacket, I had no real intention of doing anything festival-related. I was headed to the community bike project, otherwise known as Plan B.