Patience.

My most excellent UPS guy (I knew I'd like him the minute he called the Shop Dog "Killer"...) just dropped off a bunch of cool stuff. Like this:

Don't walk that fixie flat home, fix it!

Bikes aren't just for lookin' good anymore. Put that thing to work.

Also in the shipment are the makings for a new front wheel for The Tractor.


Unfortunately building this wheel isn't on my top 100 list of priorities, so I'm exhausting my willpower to not build it right this minute. Wheel building is one of those activities that gets treated with religious reverence in the bicycle wrenching community. Part nerdy bike science, part finely tuned art...An expertly build wheel will need very little (if any) regular maintenance. If you build wheels you get a certain amount of street cred (do people even say that anymore?... street cred?... What's a better way to say that?)

I really learned to build wheels one winter when my boss (who was prone to over-shop 'close out sales') acquired enough parts to make a metric ton of hand built wheels. So I built them. Practice makes perfect, right? I like that it takes patience, a certain amount of focus, and in a way, it's relaxing. I also think it's remarkable that you take a pile of separately weak and useless parts, put them together, and end up with one of the greatest inventions of all time. But, alas... not today.

See you all on Monday!