my journey to work saw the weather go from coldish to outright wet raining... you know the difference between wet rain and not so wet rain?
cycling over southwark bridge the rain reaching a peak... only got really wet towards the end of the journey so not so bad... on the bridge i was aware of the rain but felt somehow insulated... didn't stop me being very damp for the first 10 minutes of teaching, but my gloves and hat very, very welcome...
then after work (eric satie drifting through the building from my keyboard students) i arranged to meet M in the amazon cafe, M from work, she had a meeting with the university that we have dealings with, she got on the tube, i got on my bike...
cycling over the millenium bridge i was loving the sunshine, got just past st pauls before i realised my front tire was punctured...
no chance of making it to meet M... a few frantic moments before it occured to me to fix the puncture myself, as i put the puncture repair kit in my pocket this morning i'd been thinking how i hadn't used it yet...
so i wheeled the bike over to a little parkish bit behind the cathedral and i turned her upsidedown, got out the bits and proceeded to fix my puncture... my first roadside puncture fixing and what might become a 5-minute job took me 30 minutes...
the front tire has the old fashioned kind of valve that doesn't really fit my pump so i suffered... cold hands not quite working properly, the wind biting despite the sunshine, rain almost beginning again and i felt slightly on the edge, but the rain amidst the sunlight promised a rainbow and i raised my head up and did indeed glimpse a rainbow between several tall buildings... momentary grace before finishing the job and getting back on my bike and my journey home...
met up with M as promised although later than planned, devoured a mountain of food, discovered the first of two great things about my bicycle pump whilst talking with M, looking at it and wondering about the strange shape of the handle, reasoning that it looked as though the handle would tilt... and lo and behold tilting did occur,so much easier to pump therefore...
then we walked down the holloway road, her to her meeting and me to the bike shop, even though i'd fixed the puncture i decided i wanted to get an inner tube with the same kind of valve as my back tire and indeed the valve that my pump could deal with, whilst in there i also chose to change the outer tube, poor thing was worn and cracked...
whereupon two more realisations, firstly that my bicycle pump could deal really well with both kind of valve, a fact that spski had posited but that i hadn't believed, foolish to go against spski's bicycle lore, the guy in the shop showed me how to swap it over... so no new inner tube thankyou very much, good job because they don't seem to do inner tubes with the other kind of valve for that small a wheel... my repaired inner tube survived the day out and got itself a lovely new outer tube as well, being the second realisation... when i came back to pick up the newly fitted bike with tire i found the make of tire was the make that Ch had recommended to me the other day, much faster with a swaby tire not that that's how it's spelt, we chose the tire without talking about names... funny to follow his advice without consciously doing so...
oh and one more bicycle fact... my front wheel is a metric wheel, my back wheel imperial...
jus how many kookie facts about my bike can i find?
by then the wind really cold as i cycled home on my new nippy tire...
now i'm deep in rendering/video stuff for the cutup tree film... many hours to go yet...
x
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