Living For The City

Knowing that my friends Talyor & Maria were coming over today to build up Maria’s newly painted Flite 100 I figured that I’d take a quick trip over to the hardware store to up my tool game.

I mean, sure, I could buy one of these for $150 US or I could drop under $10 on something more like this. I normally just use a wood block and a hammer but you don’t wanna risk messin’ up a little ladies paint job on the first day if you can avoid it.

Rod, washers, hacksaw & nuts. Check.

Ninja stars… check.

Voila! Instant Headset Press.

I bought a wingnut for the top but somehow managed to lose it between the hardware store and my house. In hindsight, though, the wrench probably works better than my weak little hands for pressin’ those suckers in there.

My BB tool sucks eggs and slips all the time so I picked up a washer to slot in there to hold it in place – worked like a charm, much better than the toonie I used to use.

Re-assembling bikes is always more fun because things just kind of fit together. I like tinkering and I do enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to make different parts fit together but sometimes, on a rainy Sunday, you just want shit to work!

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Who that be?

Me baby gyal Charlie in the place to be!

My Mark Weaver print finally showed up and I am pretty jazzed! I bought this frame for $1 at a garage sale a few weeks ago – I’ll spend a couple of bucks on some new glass for it this week and my walls will get just a little bit less baron.

With an rumored LCBO strike looming – I figured that there was no better time to put my bag to the test which handily took a 24 of Tuborg tallies. I bought them mostly for the contractors working on my house but so far I don’t think they’ve really touched them. I, on the other hand, have. Sheeeeeit.

Last week, Sean and I took his nephew Braeden out to St. Catherines to check out Alexisonfire playing in support of their new record Old Crows / Young Cardinals which is pretty killer. George has been doing something different with his voice and it’s a seriously good thing. True story.

Braeden starts high school next year – lock up your daughters!

Happy 5th Birthday Louis! I know that you read the blog and you’ll be excited to see yourself on it.

Robbie bought a sweet road bike; I hope you’re happy with yourself… now I’m going to have to get one.

The fellas and I went out to see Propagandhi on Friday night and as usual, they did not disappoint. Over the course of the last three records this band has climbed their way up from the poppy, obnoxious punk band that I couldn’t possibly care less about to one of my favorite bands of all time – serious, serious rippers.

I haven’t really been spending as much time maintaining my bikes as I normally would / should and it had really started to feel unsafe, on top of being a little sluggish so last night while waiting for Sean to take care of some business I gave the drivetrain a once twice thrice over…

I’ve had a weird click in my pedal stroke which I largely attributed to some sort of kink in the chain (perhaps a bent link) for more than a month and I’ve just kind of let it go, figuring that I’d just replace the chain when the shop got the SRAMs in. It’s been getting worse so I opted to get to the bottom of it.

In the end – it may have in fact been the chain but it also very well could have been the busted lock nut or the heavily sharktoothed cog.

I take back what I said about the Kool chain – until I replaced the cog the new Heavy Duty Z Chain that I put on there sounded like a chainsaw as well…

New cog, new lock nut, new chain – drivetrain is much, much smoother now.

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It’s Bike Month in Toronto and the Police are in the midst of another Bike Safety Blitz Cash Crop so be sure to be extra mindful of the official rules of the road to avoid the heavy fines that go along with even the most minor of infractions.

It’s amazing that we live in a city where the fine for not having a bell on your bike is the same for opening a door into traffic and killing a man.

More info about cycling related violations here.

More info about how avoid having officers take advantage of you while issuing cycling related tickets @ Toronto Cyclist Union

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Last week I posted about my old buddy Harley who passed away in the arms of his adopted parents last Monday, which is very sad for everyone that was lucky enough to have spent time with him.

The good news is that for all of the friends that we lose over time, new ones make their way into our lives and fill in some of the gaps that our old ones leave behind.

Meet Charlie…

… and Irwin.

I really miss having a dog and can’t wait until my life calms down enough for me to be able to give them all the love and attention that they need.

Hammell likes to throw good surprise birthday BBQs for his lovely lady, Danielle. He managed not to wreck it, like he wrecked my surprise party a few years back. Way to go, goldie – happy birthday Danielle.

Killen likes being number one.

Vans makes quality footwear, Chris likes toes.

Rob Blyth likes being a man of careful, calculated decision making as perfectly exemplified by his decision to roll out of the shop on this dutch bike last Saturday… it will be returned shortly.

Toby likes having a positive outlook on life.

My dad likes eating at Sadie’s and making funny faces.

Liam & Rob like being famous and hanging out freezies to pre-teenaged girls with the names of the Jonas Brothers written all over their tshirts in marker.

Sean likes telling said tweens that he manages the Jonas Brothers and can get them backstage if they take a bite of his big ol’ freezie.

Nick likes shucking oysters in the park in honor of his birthday.

Doobis likes getting older and watching baseball in the park. He misses being on the winningest team in men’s softball.

My phone likes being punk as fuck.

Sean likes getting his feet tattooed by Sarah Bolen.

Maybel likes being a good girl.

All true stories.

I currently don’t have a living room because the new subfloor / floor is being layed but while the rest of the house may be a bit of a construction zone, I now have somewhere nice and comfortable to retreat to.

I need to paint (badly), fill some of those blank walls with pretty pictures, finish some electrical, probably replace the ceiling fan which lasted about two weeks and pop in this ’70s Wool Shag rug that is currently sitting in my parent’s basement before I’m really happy with it but at least one room in the house is starting to take shape and I’m very happy / thankful for it.

Oh yeah, check out this little measurin’ stick that I picked up last weekend while out junkin’ with Aner, Mirka and the boys… It may not be particularly useful for me but it sure is nice to look at.

I’m moving to Slovenia to ride here with these dudes. Click that link, look at those snaps, total mind blow.

Colin posted up this little gem yesterday which improved my life by leaps and bounds. Lemmy!

McCracken found out the hard way what happens to a headset when you ride a single bike through 3 winters without removing / regreasing things from time to time. It’s been a long while since I’ve done any maintenance on my bad weather bike so I’m terrified to find out what’s going on in there.

Fortunately I had a spare set but I foolishly dropped the bearing race one time and now it’s all wonky. At least the wonky bearings will get him to a shop more reliably than the rusted out / broken ones!

While I was over at DBLNT HQ Andrew showed me some of the posters that they’ve been working on and screening themselves. Amazing, as usual – they’d be better with a little you know what but I’ll let it slide this time. Yeah, that’s right, I mentioned it again!

Tracko recently posted a little review of the new large fanny jammer from Transient and given that my old Under The Weather swinger wasn’t really designed to be worn as a fanny pack and doesn’t work quite as well as I’d like; coupled with the fact that I’m a sucker for new stuff on sale (until June 30th), I placed an order.

I can’t wait for this thing to get here as I’ve been a long time supporter of fanny packs as perfectly demonstrated below. Let’s face it – as the weather gets warmer my desire to sling a huge black bag over my back begins to dwindle so it’ll be nice to have a little bag for essentials to fall back on.

As long as we’re talking new stuff, let’s talk new old stuff like this little 1940′s Ontario school desk (complete with ink well and pencil trench) that I picked up last night. She’s a beaut!

How many old desks do I need, you ask? All of them, is the answer. All of them.

Looks awesome! Good work to Sean & Benny & the whole BFF Toronto crew… makes me wish that my life hadn’t been such a whirlwind for the last few months and I could have made it out to have been a part of this… seriously, so rad.

The house is coming along; I’ve been taking tons of photos as it progresses but I’ll probably post a larger before/during/after type thang once I start working on the finishes. If you purchase an old home and decide to do renovations make sure that you understand three things; nothing will be done right, nothing will be on time and everything costs extra. As long as you understand that going into it you’ll be fine.

In the meantime; I’ve got to concentrate on not growing into the type of guy that brings his pet iguanas to the park. Then again, maybe that’s exactly who I want to be?

So, yesterday on Craigslist someone posted 2 sets of Time Atac pedals, some Looks and some Dura Ace clipless pedals for free! It wasn’t far from home so I got to them pretty quickly and as I was putting them in my bag I blurted out “are you sure you don’t want anything for all these?!” to which she replied “well if you feel really bad you could throw me $20″ so I did…

Now, I think $20 for all these is more than fair but I need to learn to shut my mouth because free is ALWAYS better than fair. File under: Tales of great fortune and ultimate stupidity.

Really, though, the only thing worth reporting this week is THIS.

Big shout out to Jon Roth, Roger @ Blood & Bandages, Johnny Depp & George Clooney for all their help. Thanks to founders of the Lifestyle Photographist Collection Killer Killen & Bum Bum Bobby for the pics.

I’m going to miss you dearly, old buddy.

On a somewhat unrelated note; for those of you looking for a new chain breaker – the Park CT 7 is fantastic. For those of you looking for a new chain, unless you like your bike to sound like a fucking chainsaw, don’t buy a KMC Kool chain. That thing came off the minute I got home. Yuck.

On a totally unrelated note; I love the internet. I saw the Public Enemies trailer a little while ago and couldn’t get that jam out of my head. Today, after about 2 minutes of researching and 5 minutes of downloading I had immersed myself in a world of old time, bluesy banjo jams… played by modern folk. Check out Otis Taylor‘s Recapturing The Banjo record and bob that head, clap them hands and stomp them feet.

Otis Taylor, 10,000,000 Slaves:

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