I got a very long holidays when college days vanished. Finished, I should say. This leaves me with a total boredom to kill, and books with magazines aren't always the solution. Nor are TV stations, since they are quite literally repetitions of each other (save for Trans). The worst thing though, is that my dogs prefer not to bite me after I meddle with them. Mind you, I did not put powders of marijuana in their diet.
However, suddenly in that moment, I found something that needs heartful attention as well as massive time. It is my (dad's) 11-years-old bought-used dark-orange-coloured mountain bicycle. It had squatted down in the corner of the garage for some time, collecting dust and my dog's fur in its cassette. And when I put it out and took it for a ride, there were friction noises coming from the rear brake pads and the derailleur sets. It was quite diabolical to hear the sound of metal rubbing to each other.
Urged with cycling desire within me, I decided to mend it a bit. First by cleaning the rear cassette. It is quite a tedious job, so I won't bore you with it, but the gist was that I spend a good three hours cleaning the whole thing with its chain. And it is not that clean, since there are still dirts between the cogs, but the teeth were done properly.
After that, the rear brake got tightening treatment. It is a good thing that the brake is not disc, since I don't really understand its assembly. Anyway, I found out that the metal pusher got through the rubber pad, hence rubbing the outer rim when the brake is applied. It left a round silver scar on the rim, scraping it off bit by bit. In the end, after some hours of sweaty hex-key-turning, I can't exactly mend it, but it got better. At least it works, albeit the brake lever has to be pulled deeply in order to get the braking force in action.
It is quite tiring, to be honest. Not necessarily the labour, but achieving the setting you yearn for. Especially if in order to get that you have to turn an ultra-strongly-attached nuts, which can only be turned by some gentlemen with muscle-toned lubricants-stained arms.
But paradoxically, it is in the same time exciting. If you have a passion on knowing how things work, this is quite a heaven. Turning a nut with a spanner would reveal some relation of the thing with the thing it is attached to. It gets even better if the nuts are attached in different places, and formed a rather complex assembly, operated by only a thin steel line. It is a bicycle brake, actually.
I got quite overwhelmed by a simple thing. Somebody might shout 'lebay lu ah' to me. Well, in all honesty, I am properly amazed on how things work. It is not often somebody would lay a blueprint of a tool, with its complex shapes and connections of its parts. I might faint if somebody shows me a blueprint of Aprillia's techno-laden V4 race engine. Why could somebody come with that kind of idea? I know that it is a work of a team, but what kind of people is in that team? Some rather boring boffins, I imagine.
Well, I might look and sound like one, but trust me, when something has caught your attention, it is always worth the effort to actually get deep into it. At least I can talk geek to other geek.
Friday, May 27th 2011.
However, suddenly in that moment, I found something that needs heartful attention as well as massive time. It is my (dad's) 11-years-old bought-used dark-orange-coloured mountain bicycle. It had squatted down in the corner of the garage for some time, collecting dust and my dog's fur in its cassette. And when I put it out and took it for a ride, there were friction noises coming from the rear brake pads and the derailleur sets. It was quite diabolical to hear the sound of metal rubbing to each other.
Urged with cycling desire within me, I decided to mend it a bit. First by cleaning the rear cassette. It is quite a tedious job, so I won't bore you with it, but the gist was that I spend a good three hours cleaning the whole thing with its chain. And it is not that clean, since there are still dirts between the cogs, but the teeth were done properly.
After that, the rear brake got tightening treatment. It is a good thing that the brake is not disc, since I don't really understand its assembly. Anyway, I found out that the metal pusher got through the rubber pad, hence rubbing the outer rim when the brake is applied. It left a round silver scar on the rim, scraping it off bit by bit. In the end, after some hours of sweaty hex-key-turning, I can't exactly mend it, but it got better. At least it works, albeit the brake lever has to be pulled deeply in order to get the braking force in action.
It is quite tiring, to be honest. Not necessarily the labour, but achieving the setting you yearn for. Especially if in order to get that you have to turn an ultra-strongly-attached nuts, which can only be turned by some gentlemen with muscle-toned lubricants-stained arms.
But paradoxically, it is in the same time exciting. If you have a passion on knowing how things work, this is quite a heaven. Turning a nut with a spanner would reveal some relation of the thing with the thing it is attached to. It gets even better if the nuts are attached in different places, and formed a rather complex assembly, operated by only a thin steel line. It is a bicycle brake, actually.
I got quite overwhelmed by a simple thing. Somebody might shout 'lebay lu ah' to me. Well, in all honesty, I am properly amazed on how things work. It is not often somebody would lay a blueprint of a tool, with its complex shapes and connections of its parts. I might faint if somebody shows me a blueprint of Aprillia's techno-laden V4 race engine. Why could somebody come with that kind of idea? I know that it is a work of a team, but what kind of people is in that team? Some rather boring boffins, I imagine.
Well, I might look and sound like one, but trust me, when something has caught your attention, it is always worth the effort to actually get deep into it. At least I can talk geek to other geek.
Friday, May 27th 2011.
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