Grease is the Answer

I took my his n' hers Peugeot frames to the co-op this evening, as I needed a pin spanner to remove the adjustable cup from the hers so I could put the whole bottom bracket into the his. Turns out people notice when you bring in a pair of French bikes and then sit quietly with a small screwdriver, scraping loctite out of the threads of the bb shell. A super nice older bike guy named Dan helped me out with wrenching the fixed cup in; I will have major bruises for a few days, but I very much doubt it'll come loose on the mean streets of Baltimore like Miss P did on her third day out. We did the bb adjustment real nice and now I feel like a pro.

Next came the headset, as Sean said it was bone dry, so I dove into the mystery world of headset bearings and parts with abandon. I had loose bearings, ok, no problem. Junked em, cleaned the old dirty grease from the races, flipped Mr. P upside down and installed the lower bearings with plenty o' grease, then flipped again and did the top bearings. Mysteriously (!) the lockring-style part was going on stubbornly, so I used the trusty towel rag to turn it, my hands greasy as a night out in Jean Paul II. This had the added effect of stripping much of the grease from the bearings themselves, resulting in major problems (bearings doubling up) when the headset was installed all the way. Sean and I took a few minutes to figure out the problem and then I redid everything with more grease and Voila! a more-or-less smoothly turning fork. Good enough for me, je te dis.

By this time it was cleanup hour so I swept and put away my tools and cursed again my foolishness at breaking my chain completely apart earlier in the evening and ruining everything. I'll have to go in tomorrow and take out a link and replace it with leftover chain, not quite sure how that'll work but if Sean says it's what I gotta do, then I gotta do it. Pretty much I should get my own dang chain tool is what I'm learning, if you ask me. I snagged a french stem and have my eye on a super nice and dried out Ideale saddle (black) that might be reconstituted into something awesome with enough Proofide and TLC.

Dude 3 / Creepy Dude showed up and made me look at his Peugeot, which I think of as Robert's Peugeot, and I was sad to see it in his back trunk awaiting its fate as the fixie of a creepy desperate man. It cried out to me for rescue but the timing was impossible. Only cool people should ride French bikes, though I know this is a reve of mine that will only make me bitter and angry when I see goofballs on their Gitanes.

Afterwards we went to Joe's where I discovered that Alex of the large earrings spent 3 years riding the rails in boxcars, and Noah, despite being 22, is extremely well informed about bands I've never heard of as well as art spaces in Baltimore. Noah can trackstand too on his BADASS Pinarello, which I am trying not to covet.

I think I have everything I need (except the chain tool!) to finish the bike tomorrow, so, nchallah I will be riding Mr. P to work on friday. Oooooooh I am excited to get on this bike!