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.