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I’ve finally figured out why my rolling stock is in such shoddy condition most of the time. I seemed to have developed a case of workshop-phobia.
I’ve never recovered from my move from Malden. You would think that with this big house in the suburbs, I would have a much better environment to work on my bikes. Not so, what’s lacking is a basement. In Bedford, I have a two car garage, one side of which is relegated to bike repair. The square footage is larger than my basement in Malden, but it’s just not the same. One problem is that the garage is unheated, so in the winter, I am really loathe to do much work there. The other problem is the walls of the garage are concrete, making it really hard to fasten things to. In Malden, I inherited a rather ample workbench with drawers, and a metal structure with numerous shelves. That combined with all the things I could stuff up into the rafters in the ceiling, gave me quite a lot of storage space.
In Malden, I always knew where everything was. Of course, living there for eighteen odd years made it somewhat easier to remember. With the move to Bedford, things needed to find new homes. I’m convinced there are some that never made the transition. I spent a good portion of the first couple of years we were there looking for things. The other day I was reduced to actually buying derailleur pulleys when I couldn’t find my stash of used derailleurs. In my glory days, I used to be the derailleur pulley king.
I’d been spending more time in my garage looking for things than actually fixing bikes. After a while, I finally gave up. Now, many of my treasures have found new homes, I have my box of chainrings, for instance, that used to be individual chainrings in bizarre locations.
Another thing I miss in my former basement was the sink. This was a big nasty old sink made out of slabs of slate or some such. With the accumulated stains of many many years of dirty icky projects I never had to worry too much about what happened to it. Now, my cleanup place is the downstairs bathroom, which is a bit more posh than the old basement, so now when I’ve finished cleaning me up, I have to spend as much time again cleaning up the sink and environs.
I used to have a jar of home brew cleaning solution which was a combination of kerosene, gasoline, and other noxious fluids, which if the EPA got wind of, would have declared to be a superfund site. I would pour this into a container and slosh parts around in it to clean them. This pretty much lasted forever, sludge would build up on the bottom at a rate of about two millimeters a year, and I would have to top it up occasionally to make up for losses, but this lasted for years. I still have the jar, but I now use it only occasionally, due to the aforesaid cleanup requirements.
I once came close to a citizen’s divorce for suggesting that the downstairs shower would be a good place to clean all the salt and sand off the bikes in the winter, so I guess I’m pretty well confined to the garage.
Guess the bikes will have to wait for Spring cleaning.
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