axle agony

Newly single after my first ever break-up, discussing boys and dating, my best friend asked a seemingly rhetorical question:
“Don’t you like to be taken care of?”
I remember giving some ambivalent answer. Never having been comfortable batting my eyelashes, I still find it hard to expect to be taken care of. It’s too lady-like. Too La Dama Bianca. And with a passion for drop bars and mostly horizontal top tubes, I’d like to think I look better in a kit than a white dress.
Besides, white is so not slimming.
And when you’re handling bikes - or even just one - nothing stays white for long. Which is why you won’t find a Dama Bianca dress in my closet, much less anything very lady-like; things like tensioning my chain, wiping down my bike, and scrubbing my rims bring me too much joy.

Well, when I can actually do them.
Skipping home last night with a newly purchased pedal wrench [yes, I didn’t own one until now], I gleefully flipped over my Bianchi to switch back to single-speed-ness. With the ghetto lack-of-bike-stand set-up, I fitted the equally ghetto 6” adjustable wrench on the axle nut. And pushed. And pulled. And leveraged. And gritted my teeth. And seethed. And threw a temper tantrum.
The thing wouldn’t move. I know the adjustable is probably at least half the problem, but nothing feels more lonely than helplessness. The worst part being that when I do bring it in to IBC today, the guys are going to loosen it with a quick flick of their wrist, oblivious to the sheer misery and pain it brought me hours earlier.

I love those guys, but today, I hate the idea of going back to the shop. I don’t ever want to be seen as “the girl that uses her lack of a package to get bike mechanics to do things and consequently doesn’t know how to work on her bike.” Because I’m not. I wanted to flip that wheel and switch out my pedals, by myself. I wanted to know that I could still do it, even if it was the most simple of bike maintenance tasks.
Maybe that’s why it was so disappointingly frustrating. I’m going to buy a new wrench today though, and insisting on tightening those axel nuts by myself.
But just for the record, I’m not breaking up with IBC. I just need some independence...and room to wrench.

laced

I woke up this morning with my face pressed against wire. Wtf?
And then I walked into the bathroom to find two bare rims in my bathtub and tubes hanging from my shower curtain rod. Oh yeah, I left my bike in pieces last night. Oops.
Not the Dolan; I had enough sense to perch that next to my couch before battling my Bianchi. I turned it upside down [due to a lack of a bike stand] last night, thinking I'd quickly switch out the tires for my ride today. "Quickly" turned out to be half an hour of frustrated screaming which degenerated into a crying fit of frustration. I hate hate hate it when I can't do something by myself. Being faced with a lack of physical power was the last straw in the estrogen blitzkrieg that's been assaulting me lately.
After crying pathetically with a wrench in my hand for about 5 minutes, and seized by that "crazy" that powers women through irrational decisions and ugly fights with significant others, I finally managed to wrench off both wheels. I was covered in black stuff up to my elbows. I tossed both the wheels into the bathtub and tried to forget about how inept I am.

It was harder to forget how depressingly lonely times like this feel, and reminded me of something a friend from school told me:
"These past two years have been the loneliest years of my life."
I couldn't agree more. Law school - an environment in which you're pitted against your peers - isn't conducive to developing trusting relationships. Add to that the fact that we see each other every day and by Friday, it's understood that our weekends are saved for whatever we have outside of school: college friends and girlfriends for my friends, my bikes for me.

Bikes don't console you when you're depressed though, and they don't give you high-fives when you manage to accomplish something stupid like getting some rusted over axel nuts off your bike. My hands sore for hours afterwards, I bawled in front of my computer to an ever-diligent best friend about how much I wanted to leave Boston. There's nothing here for me, I claimed, and no one really gives a shit, so what does it matter? I'm waiting, studying, cycling...to leave.
As I threw copious crumpled up tissues into my trash can, something grated against my desk. I looked down to see a bracelet I had nearly forgotten about wrapped snugly around my wrist. It's a DT Swiss spoke - light, flexible, and a reminder that there's a place I can go to hide and recharge. It's an upgrade from the bike chain bracelet I was sporting last summer - a heavy ring of metal that I was wearing just to seem cool and bike-y, but carried with it too many double standards and expectations I just couldn't [and didn't want to] meet.

The spoke bracelet was made by Chris at IBC, and everyone behind the counter seemed to be sporting one yesterday. Needless to say, I passed out last night with it around my wrist, my hands and arms still black and blistered, but feeling just a little bit better.
Maybe, just maybe, I won't pedal straight out of here when I get that J.D.