Third Week of August

Third week of August
The peak of insanity
before they all leave.

This is the big one. With two triathlons and the Mt. Washington Hill Climb this weekend, plus a bunch of last hurrah vacationers, bikes in need of immediate attention are piled all around the workshop. I wanted to arrange them as anti-personnel barriers. Before long it became obvious I would only have to let them accumulate naturally to form an impenetrable tangle of metal, plastic and carbon fiber.

Featured guests include a hill climb conversion, two tunes on other bikes from the same family for the same event and a guy who broke a spoke and tried to fix his own wheel by loosening all the other spokes before he surrendered and brought the mess to us. He also disassembled his rear brake pads and lost some parts. Late in the day a woman brought in her snazzy Trek full suspension bike. The rear derailleur bore telltale signs that the man in her life had been trying to "fix" things.

Did I mention that this is all urgent?

The wheel I'm building for a touring bike is on its third day of de-stressing and retensioning. For some reason it is taking a ridiculous amount of time to settle in. Another wheel job waits in the queue. I've built many more than usual this year.

Time to get back in there. After this weekend -- probably by Sunday, in fact -- everyone will suddenly disappear. We'll have repair work, but nothing like this.