Day 367 | Some Cairns backpacker: last night in civilisation

rest day

People who should know better can talk a lot of crap about bikes.

Like: those rims are rubbish, this $100 full wheel will be much better.

Fortunately I’m sufficiently long-in-the-tooth to ignore such thoughts, usually I don’t need much reassurance.

It was a long haul to get my rear wheel attended to, when I think of it the real issue was that the nipples were alloy and some obscure, ie, tiny size so I managed to give a few a good burr when trying to get enough tension on them to straighten the wheel up. Then you can’t do anything with them, tighten or loosen.

The first bikeshop, to remain nameless to avoid the lawsuits, said they’d look at the wheel if I’d leave the bike there for the day.

So I did.

They didn’t.

Back the next day, what do you think happened?

My bike sat in the shop, a trained bike mechanic in attendance for a total of 17 working hours, and, well, it just sat there.

Bring it back on Tuesday, ie, after the long, Public Holiday weekend, and we’ll see what we can do, as a priority.

I found another bike repair shop way out in the sticks, well, maybe a 4 km walk each way, with two bike mechanics on duty, uniforms, and a booking system. It would be done on Tuesday, no worries.

So I left it for another long stint in a Cairns bikeshop and wandered into town for the day. I wasn’t expecting the phone call, how hard is it exactly to relace a wheel when you have the full workshop and you aren’t standing on a biting ant’s nest.

Rims are no good, all wrong, not even for commuting, big huh? from me at that, can’t guarantee, etc.

Note here the rims are the virtually indestructible Rigida Andreda, I’ll have to email Rigida and tell them that the crew at the Bike Centre in Manunda don’t think much of their bulletproof rims.

Err, get on with it.

Later, I picked the bike up, rides well, but the spokes are a tad loose I reckon.

Sometimes your standard bike mechanic, used to servicing road bikes almost exclusively, can’t understand the difference a huge load on a bike makes: couldn’t do the spokes up any tighter because the rims are so bad that they’ll pull through. Another rant against the rims, the holes are too big, worn through, although somehow I think they don’t have the right sized spoke nipples.

I ride off just thankful the brakes have been adjusted, the gears working smoothly. I guess I should spend more time attending to these minor bike matters, aren’t I supposed to be one of those perfectionist Virgos, after all I can almost true a wheel from scratch out in fuckery.

Somehow I have a strange and deep seated belief that if I start looking for problems I’m going to find things I just don’t want to see, the front fork clearly needs replacing after 12 years, and 3 years of constant smashing down rugged roads, the headset has a deep groove that keeps the bike on track without looking, they started listing other work that should be done, just like your average dentist sizing up all a gob of urgently needed crowns, but my ears are switched down.

You know I don’t need a perfect world to operate in, hopefully the next 200 days of damage won’t be excessively serious on the mechanical issue side of things.

I later dropped in to the last bike shop in town I stumbled across while taking a shortcut, what turned out to be the one I should have gone to in the first place, Edge Cycleworks in McLeod Street, and found the Schwable Marathon Tour rear tyre that will get me back to Melbourne.

I asked for a second opinion about the wheel issue, the owner’s been there for almost 20 years, I’ve later been recommended him as the probably the best wheel builder of the rugged type in town, his shop is all about full suspension bikes, ie, has to know how to build a smash proof wheel.

Seems my new spoke nipples are once again alloy but there seems no reason that I can’t crank em up, the rim is a good one, just designed for those bigger spoke nipples.

Those fear merchants, well, basically didn’t have much idea we concur.

After the thrashing that poor bike has been through I surprisingly remain a bit blasé about the whole bike mechanics issue and, for that matter, how much that rear wheel has in fact now cost.