Just like riding a bike

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

- Albert Einstein -

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As a kid I was always attempting some stupid stunt or other so had to fix my bike a lot. It's been a long time since I did so however, I was about 15 years old I figure. I've had bikes since then but haven't had to fix them I guess, just maintain them. Anyway, today I fixed a bike, started to fix a bike, for the first time in around 37 years, the image shows the bike, and I had a very nice time doing it.

Not my bike

When I found out my nephew was coming to spend some weeks with me around Christmas time at the end of the year I was very excited and started planning stuff for him and I to do together. Bike riding was one of those things and that meant getting him a bike. He lives 4,000 kilometres from me so isn't here much, the next time after Christmas he'll have grown so I didn't want to go to very much expense.

I went for a recon of second hand shops today and found this one which I think will do just nicely. Just to clarify, I went to recon second hand shops but found this in the very first one and in true G-dog style I fucken bought it there an then, and went home - I don't like shopping around and all that fuckassery.

It's a little banged up in places; clearly it's been well used. It had a flat front tyre, the front brake pads are screwed and the bell was broken. It's ok, I thought, I can sort that out. For $19 Australian dollars I thought it was a winner. My nephew will love it.

G-dog can rebuild it

Admittedly, the rebuild is more a tickle-up of a few things rather than a ground up restoration. My nephew will only be here for a couple weeks so I don't want to go too crazy with this bike. I want to make it safe and present well, but won't worry too much about the paintwork and so on. It really only needs a bloody good clean plus the minor repairs as mentioned above. I set to work getting that done this afternoon.

First things first, I removed the front brake pads so I could demount the front wheel. I pried the tyre off the rim on one side, removed the inner-tube, put a little air in then submersed it in a bucket of water to locate the leak. I marked it then got to patching it.

A rub of sandpaper to prepare the surface, a generous smear of rubber glue and a patch then some drying time pretty much handles the job. I poked and prodded the tube back into to the rim ensuring it wasn't pinching anywhere, remounted the tyre inside the rim and inflated it to 38psi.

See? The G-dog really is handy and not at all a waste of space.

I removed the rear red reflector as I'll need to set the seat lower for the little fellow and it was in the way, and took the bell off which I'll replace and will refit the new front brake pads next weekend as the shop was closed today. I need to adjust the front brakes as I don't want him going over the handle bars and would prefer he uses the rear brake mostly which is a peddle-back system.

After that I'll tub it, meaning I'll give it a bath. I have a pressure cleaner (love my Kärcher) so will soap it up and blast the fuck out of the bike to get it sparkling. From there it's a blow-down with high pressure air and some lubrication on the chain and other moving parts. Who doesn't like some lubrication, am I right?

The final touches will be some tyre shine on the tyre walls and I'll add some stickers which I'm ordering tonight. My Nephew loves the police so I'll get some police stickers on there for him and he'll be set to go.

A Sunday well spent

I really enjoyed turning spanners on this bike today, basic though it was. As a childless man I don't get to do stuff like this very often, you know, stuff for kids. I'm really looking forward to my little buddy getting here and seeing his bike; I think he'll totally love it and enjoy the time spent with me riding with it.

So this is what I've done with my Sunday. Ok, so I went to the hardware store, had lunch at the café there and wandered the aisles looking at tool and hardware porn also, but that's my normal Sunday. What did y'all get up to? Tell me in the comments below.