An ending

I know, the wheels need rotating 180

I read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'  a quarter of a century or so ago. I've written before that a lasting passage is the one where the narrator describes his son's approach to hiking up mountains - too focussed on the peak and too little attention paid to what is under foot (an absence of living in and appreciating the present moment). Although difficult, I'm trying to live in the moment more and not get hung up on what lies ahead. Difficult, yes, difficult. Will the future be one of sufficient financial stability and good health to be enjoyable? I need to get over the former, right? You can cut your cloth accordingly and my lifestyle isn't one that's difficult to finance (apart from bike projects I can't resist - is enough bike a thing?).

A recent article on The Radavist stirred up distant memories of the book. At the book's heart lies a distinction between the Romantic and the Classical. The Romantic lives in the gestalt of the present moment, lost in the experience, untroubled by rational thought. This is the milieu I inhabit when riding a bike: lost in the moment, it's an escape from the gumption traps of anxiety over the future, the boredom of the job that pays the bills, the crushing burnout of middle age. The Classical thinker ploughs a rational furrow through life, one of detail, one that gets to the nitty gritty of how things work. That's the bike mechanic in me, albeit an amateur - I want to understand how the bike and its parts work. It's a reason I favour cables over hydraulics and electronics - pulling or pushing a lever this way or that alters the tension which pulls in a brake caliper or opposes the spring of a derailleur. There's also the satisfaction of self-sufficiency, being able to do the job myself.

The pub bike, the bike-that-never-gets-built, has been built. Of course it isn't a pub bike, a banger to lock up and leave, unworried by it getting pinched. When building a bike I can't resist making that little bit of an effort. It's a world tourer (for that world tour that is always thought about but never done), a bike that offers comfort and is easy to fix in the back of beyond.

NOS or secondhand Shimano does a lot of the work.

A perch by way of Smethwick's finest

Pedals courtesy of MKS.

There's a basket.

A bell too.

Plenty of shellac.

And one of my custom cork spacers.