In Which Contrasting Rides Feature a Dad Bucket

Late Saturday, April 6, on the Cedar River Trail--lots of bike traffic.

The week that was in CRBiker’s bicycling life:

It was sometimes cool and damp, sometimes warm and sunny, but for sure a spring week, and for that I’m grateful. On Saturday, late in the afternoon, as part of a mutually needed break form a long day of intense grading, my wife and I got the bikes out, make a quick run up to and around the park in Robins, and stopped at DQ on the way home. Peanut Buster Parfaits were on sale.

It was 70 and felt, to cold Iowans, like the first really “warm” day.

The week also featured thoughts of my dad. There were some dampish days where I would have rather ridden my winter beater bike than my better hybrid bike, but the Fancy Beast had a lame front limb—a flat tyre. While in Ames over spring break, I had purchased a patch kit and tube. And this week I finally did a bit of bike maintenance.

The tube turned out to be way too small, so patch it was. And to find the leak, I used the old bucket method—rotating a tube in a bucket until I saw the bubbles, and then marking the spot.

I felt rather uncomfortable doing that. I’m a writer, not a mechanic, and I’m never at my best wielding tools. My opposable thumbs are for spacebars.

Three sky views form bike rides this week, before images of the tube patching. Sometimes sunny, sometimes breezy, sometimes nice--at least it was clearly a spring week in Iowa.

At the bike shop in Ames, they warned me to use bike tools and not screwdrivers to take out the tube--but I could not find my bike tools (which I know I own, I just could not find). Fortunately, with a bit of grunting and cursing, you can remove a mountain bike tyre WHO style--with hands only. The sequence, showing the setup, marking the leak and patching it.

Anyway, as I as there on my front porch late on a nice spring afternoon—I think it was Wednesday but I’m not sure and feel too lazy to simply check the time stamp on the images I will post—I thought of my dad and suddenly missed him. Patching tyre tubes with a bucket of water—that was very much a Saturday activity of my youth, not me personally doing it much, me chatting with and “helping” my dad when I was a boy. In my mind, the patch bucket seems associated with warm Saturdays in California.

And what is life without a few regrets in it? Thinking about California made me think of this peppy song, which has nothing to do with fathers or bicycles, but who wouldn't be briefly entertained by The Regrettes?



Well. It worked. The patch, I mean, although I hope the song worked for you, too. The next morning, the front tyre of the Fancy Beast still was full of air, so I rode that mountain bike to work—but on the morning ride, the front derailleur went “thunk” and would not shift.

Dad, where you are now? I may need more competent tool hands for, and possibly a screwdriver, for this …