Commuter Work

I lost a spoke on my commuter last week. It was a joyous occasion (lie). I ended up riding the bike back home on the broken spoke (mistake). I then waited a week to do anything, because I was about to leave town for a few days.

When I got to working on it I ended up discovering how many tools it takes to change a spoke. Let's go through the purchases:

First Trip, bike shop:
* 3 spokes ($3), two for the broken spoke I knew of, and one for the future on the other side
* 2 park allen wrenches ($20), these had nothing to do with the spoke, I just needed them for other things

After this trip I discovered I had three broken spokes. Oops. I also discovered I'd have to remove the cogs to get to the broken spoke, *doh*.

Second trip, bike shop:
* 1 free wheel tool ($8)
* 1 chain whip ($22)
* 3 spokes ($3)

Then I realized I didn't have a wrench to grab the free wheel tool. I also didn't have an adjustable wrench (Okay, I'm 23 I don't have many tools!).

Third trip, Lowe's:
* 2 adjustable wrenches ($30)

So I finally got the free wheel loose. Yay! I then proceeded to work with spokes. Well this didn't go so well. I overtightened the first one and stripped the nipple. The guy who cut the new spoke gave me lots of extra thread, I assumed (wrongly) that I needed to get most of the thread inside the nipple before it was even close.

Fourth trip, Home Depot:
* 1 pair of bolt cutters ($15)

So I cut the spoke out, fixed all three, and trued the wheel against lines on a piece of duct tape (on the bike). This bike has disc brakes, so I couldn't use the brakes. The wheel is true enough, but I'll probably have it trued this summer. Or wait until Christmas, when I'm going to beg for a truing stand.

Then I decided it was time to do other work on the bike. I took some parts off my childhood bike (a tiny frame on standard 26" wheels and other parts, a Specialized Hard Rock from about 1995). I stole the kick stand (commuter bikes need kick stands, it's a fact of life). That was easy, although sadly damaging to the paint job: Oh well, Giant does a shitty job of painting anyway (Don't buy a Giant, they're cheap for a reason).

Then I decided to steel the handlebars from my other bike. They're regular straight flat bars, about 3-4" narrower than the up curving bars I had. They also had slightly rusty and banged up ends: I had to hammer my shifter assembly over the ends! Handlebars should be aluminum!