On Bicycle Grease

Just before Christmas, catastrophe struck. My noble bicycle, my gallant steed, Schwinn the Red, suffered a sudden and bizarre injury, and he's been out of action since then. Thank God I have a sweet roommate; I've been getting to work by Chris's car for the last week and a half--but finally I got less busy, so I could get busy. Today after dim sum with church friends, Timothy dropped me off at The Bike Connection on El Camino, and I picked up a bottle of tri-flow, some handlebar tape, a fresh patch kit, two inner tubes, a new tire, and a front wheel (I mean it when I say "out of action"). And then I spent until after dark wrenching and taping and cleaning and lubing and puttering.

There's a quiet thrill to bicycle repair: going down to the garage (or out to the carport, as it may be), disassembling mechanisms down to the washers, cursing at your tools a little, coming back in and watching the drops of grime splatter off your hands in the sink--and for the rest of the day noticing the uncleanable bit of black under your fingernails, a subtle badge of honor that whispers, "These hands ain't just for keyboards or cell phones or spatulas. These are the hands of a man".

I have an inseverable mental connection between masculinity and grease. My dad's dad was a mechanic, and my dad has always done basically all of the car maintenance at home. I have a fixed image of Dad under the hood with a baseball game on the radio and grease up to his elbows: that's one of those essential things that Dad does. Years ago my brother picked up the baton and started taking care of the family's several dozen bicycles. (Don't ask me why we always seem to have two or three hundred bicycles in the garage. I really don't know.) I was slower on the uptake (Brian beat me to a lot of cool stuff, like backpacking and driving and going to South America. I beat him to some cool stuff, too, though, like being born.) and I still know nothing about cars. But about the time Brian and I did our west coast trip, I too started to pick up the Art and Science of Bicycle Repair. And since then, I too am occasionally covered in grease. I too am a man.

That's what I like to think, anyway. That's why I feel free this evening: besides the fact that my bike now has a nicer front wheel than it knows what to do with (it's aluminum!), and my brakes work, and I'm once again mobile--besides all that, tonight I have a telltale bit of bicycle grease under my fingernails.