24 hours to go . . .
I have about 24 hours left to get this ice-bike. I hired a welder yesterday to build me one, and a carpenter to build the platform. Total for labor and materials is less than U.S. $100.00. Whether these fellows will really be able to finish the job in time is kind of up in the air, this being Mexico and today being New Year’s Eve. But I have my fingers crossed.
Today I am voyaging to Puebla, a city in the volcanoes about 2 hours away, to celebrate the New Year and sample some of the local specialty, mole poblano. And to get my mind off whether these guys are going to have that bike done before I board the bus tomorrow!
Yesterday I had another horrible experience at the bike shop. I was there to buy the wheel for the sidecar. Naturally I also bought a rim-strip (they apparently use cheap plastic handlebar-tape for this purpose), a tube, and a tire. At the counter I began mounting the tire with my fingers, just to make the whole thing easier to carry. The salesman immediately grabbed it from me and began to mount the tire himself.
Now, I expect most of my readers know that to mount a tire on a rim you first seat one bead, then the next. If you try to seat both beads at once, you can’t do it. This is just about the very first thing you ever learn when mounting a tire.
This fellow, who worked at a bike shop, did not know that. I watched in awe as he struggled and struggled with the tire. I watched in wonderment as he braced the wheel on the ground, grabbed with both hands, fought and fought. Finally he wandered off to get a crowbar (!) and I grabbed the wheel and quickly mounted the tire and ran out of there.
It is so odd to me, how ignorant of bicycles these bike-shop employees are. The fellows who run the little bike mechanic’s shops are accomplishing so much with so little, and yet these guys in the commercial places, surrounded by high-end equipment, cannot even mount a tire. Bizarre.
–Erik Ryberg