Bicycle Maintainance 101

This started out as a personal "Spring Cleaning" checklist for getting the household bikes ready for riding season.  After messing around with bikes for as long as I have, it takes me about 30 minutes to "do" a bike end-to-end using this list, though if any of the checklist items turn up trouble, it takes longer.

Given the number of bikes I need to do to keep me and my household happily pedaling along, I can spend a good chunk of a Sunday afternoon with what is, for me, the pleasant task of getting things ready for the season.  Note, that if you have been keeping your bike "in good nick" (as the Brits would say) you may not have to do some of the more detailed things, or may spend only a moment or two on them.  Ideally, you did this stuff before putting the bike away for the winter, or have been doing it monthly if you ride in winter weather.

As time permits, I will stick in links to other articles that serve as a "how to" for the repair aspects.  If you have time to peruse the best resources of bike-mechanic lore on the interwebs, you will do well to start with one of these two:

• http://www.sheldonbrown.com/  One of the wise old heads of cycling, who started putting his knowledge into basic web pages back when html was a new thing.  I never met him in person, but conversed with him via e-mail and web forums, and was glad to be one of the many called "a friend of Sheldon's."  His kind demeanor and willingness to help even the annoyingly clueless won him many friends, even among those who disagreed with him about some detail or another.  Sadly, he first was struck with Multiple Sclerosis some years back, then passed away in 2008.  However friends and family keep the site up-to-date with the latest changes in technology.
• http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help  The official site of one of the big names in bicycle-specific tools, they produce some of the finest bike-specific tools available.  (The only exception is the equipment produced by Campagnolo for working on their own stuff, which is both exquisitely crafted and insanely expensive, but I digress...)  The link above is to their website for repair techniques.

What makes this evil possible?

The following was written originally immediately after the Sandy Hook shootings, but never published.  Re-reading them, I find that the words are worth publishing, regardless of whether there is a recent triggering event...

In a week like this one, many find themselves asking what makes the kind of evil witnessed this week possible.  Some blame the weapon (or the lack thereof), or mental illness, or the educational system, or any number of society's ills or failings.

I think the root cause for the slaughter of innocents lies much deeper, and has symptoms much more pervasive.

We have forgotten what it is to be human.  We have forgotten the joy, and importance, of simple human contact.  The greatest evil mankind faces may be simple loneliness.

Words, and people who abuse them...

Okay, everyone uses words. Some of us are better with them than others, but like any other tool, there are some uses that are just wrong. Some uses, while possible, damage the tool and the work, and pose a risk of harm (or at least ridicule) to the tool user.

Which, I suppose, is a fancy way of saying that some things people do with words just honk me off. With that idea clearly in mind, the following is a list of things that people just shouldn't do with words.

"Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit"

For the second time in my life, I have had to comfort some poor soul who believed that (s)he had committed the "unpardonable sin" (i.e. "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" Matthew 21:31)  Both times I have had to deal with this, it was an accusation from some highly Charismatic Believer against some other (possibly less) Charismatic Believer when the second Believer had a question about some action or practice.

Okay, there is a short form of this, and a long form.  For those of you who are not interested in either logic or analyzing Scripture, let me save you some time: 
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a sin that cannot be committed by any Believer.  If you can't stomach that idea, kindly move along.  This isn't the Blog you're looking for.

Tuning Multiple SU Carbs

A long time ago I published this article on a web page, and it seems high time that I bring it into the 21st Century...

Tuning 101:
Getting your SU's set properly.
...or...
How to get your car running the way you want, without frustration.

Note: This page is under continual construction/improvement as I learn or think of new stuff...

The biggest hassle with getting an MG (or other British car) running properly is multiple SU carbs. Not that there's anything wrong with the carbs themselves, but there's this incredible temptation to "fiddle" with them, and the range of possible adjustment is large and varied enough that you can really get things out of whack in a hurry. This tends to result in owners going prematurely bald from tearing their hair out trying to get the car running properly.

I've been there, done that, and fortunately my scalp healed up nicely. However, in the interest of keeping other MG owners from having to wear baseball caps ALL the time to hide the missing patches, I humbly present a methodical process for making your MG run it's best.

Not using Instagram, ever.

A heads up to some folks who have wondered why I don't use Instagram.  It was bought earlier this year by Facebook, and now has started "adjusting" their Terms of Use.  The following will be of interest to any of my Artist friends who have put their work on Instagram:

Fixing things...

I do a lot of my thinking in the shower, I suppose it's pretty common.  Something occurred to me this morning that I thought was pretty "blog-worthy" (and wasn't quite the right topic for my "work blog").

Most of the real problems our nation (or, for that matter, our world) faces are social and societal, not political.  So why do we look to politicians to solve them?  Politicians are good at politics, and at solving political problems.  I think our experience has borne out that they're not very good at solving societal problems, I think because they tend to apply political solutions.

If we want to solve society's problems, we need to look to society to solve them.  Of course, "society" is the problem, or at least part of it.  You see, when we refer to society, we tend to think of some unidentifiable, amorphous "them", somewhere "out there".  That's where we go wrong.  That's the "tragedy of the commons" at work.