Come the Revolution

Archive for October, 2008

How much do you know about the bicycle? How about your bicycle?

Up until I started working at a bike shop didn’t know much about them at all. I knew that I got on one, pushed the pedals, and made it go. I didn’t much think about other problems with it until they happened, and then I generally kept riding it until I couldn’t anymore. I quickly learned a few things at that particular job that would keep me from dealing with my mode of transportation with such little reverence. One of these things was that a bike shop bike, which generally ranges from $300 on up, is meant to last a lifetime. Occasionally parts may need to be replaced (brake pads, pedals, sometimes rims), but the bike as a whole should be able to handle anything short of being run over and still be usable, provided you take care of it.

How do I take care of it?

Easy! Ok, not completely easy, but easier than any basic maintenance on your motorized vehicle. You have to keep in mind the chain and pressure. Keeping the chain lubed keeps it and the gears (front and back) in good condition with as little wear as possible. Keeping air pressure in your tires keeps your riding fast and smooth while keeping your wheels properly and safely round and true.

The relative bike equivalent of an oil change is to lubricate the chain. You want to get a chain lube, specifically for bicycle chains, which is easy enough to pick up at a bike shop or on the internet. When I’m at work I use Chain-L #5, but since that’s a little expensive I tend to get a Pedro’s brand lube for home-use. I use Extra Dry because I commute and the dry lubes are less likely to stain one’s pants, although that one in particular is not recommended for Seattle (and other rainy-area) readers. Pedro’s also has at least one biodegradable lube which are notably better for the earth, but also need to be more frequently applied. If you’re going to get a biodegradable lube Chain-j (pronounced “change”, also from Pedro’s) is your best bet.

When you lube your chain, make sure the chain is clean of debris (leaves impede the chain’s purpose). Stand your bike upside-down or lean it against something and start pushing the pedals so the chain is moving, and then squirt the lube wherever it is comfortable to hold the bottle, allowing the chain to move through the lube stream at least one full rotation. Some folks ride a few minutes then wipe the excess off the chain, but that’s more work than I find necessary. If you haven’t ridden in more than a few weeks, do this before you start riding again. If you’re not going to ride for more than a few weeks, do this immediately before putting your bike in storage.

As for the pressure, you want to add pressure whenever your tires are lower than their ideal (which is somewhere between max inflation and 10 psi lower than that number). Having a floor pump at home and/or carrying a hand pump with you on longer than local rides will let you keep on top of this. The basic idea is that your bike tires should not be squeezable. You should see very little change in their apparent width when you add your weight (and whatever else you’re towing) to the bike. If they look saggy, add air. And don’t use the air pumps at the gas station if you can help it- they’re set up for a completely different pressure than bike tires need and often don’t work well at all for that reason.

Keeping your chain lubed and tires inflated does something else very important to your bike- it makes it easier to ride. Your ride will be smoother and your energy more efficiently used by the machine- more miles per gallon… of food.

Lydia Marie Child’s American Frugal Housewife is a classic of 19th century industry and morality. Child was an early feminist and abolitionist steeped in the Transcendentalist movement, and much of her advice to young, less-than-wealthy housewives still rings true today. I picked up a copy while at Sturbridge Village this summer, even though I’m no housewife and, frankly, Cian’s the frugal American in this household. Here are some of Child’s more salient points.

Time is money.

The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time as well as materials.

I’m guessing there was nary an idle hand in the Child household. While it’s no longer economical to knit our own stockings in between other tasks, we can still make use of time when our hands or minds would be otherwise unoccupied by knitting for gifts or charity while watching TV or learning a useful language while walking or taking public transportation (or driving, if you can still afford that).

Live well within your means.

No false pride, or foolish ambition to appear as well as others, should ever induce a person to live one cent beyond the income of which he is certain. If you have two dollars a day, let nothing but sickness induce you to spend more than nine shillings; if you have one dollar a day, do not spend but seventy-five cents; if you have half a dollar a day, be satisfied to spend forty cents.

Well would you look at Mrs. Child, preaching the dangers of a credit economy in 1828. She’s right, though. Modern-day frugalists advise us to put away 10% of our earnings which, depending on how much (or how little) you make, may seem to add up v e r y s l o w l y. A more dramatic an adventurous savings method for the seriously committed couple is to live entirely off of one partner’s earnings, and put the other’s directly into savings.

Pick up your twine and paper.

In this family, when the father brought home a package, the older children would, of their own accord, put away the paper and twine neatly [. . . .] If the little ones wanted a piece of twine to play scratch-cradle, or spin a top, there it was, in readiness; and when they threw it upon the floor, the older children had no need to be told to put it again in its place. [. . .] The other day, I heard a mechanic say ‘I have a wife and two little children; we live in a very small house; but, to save my life, I cannot spend less than twelve hundred a year.’ Another replied ‘You are not economical; I spend but eight hundred.’ I thought to myself– ‘Neither of you pick up your twine and paper.’

There are limits to how much twine and paper you can pick up when you live in a (frugally) small space, but this hint has served Cian and I well. He saves plastic utensils from the occasional take-out meal to bring with his brown bag lunch, and I wash and save the tubs that soft cheeses come in to store my own yogurt cheese in. Ah, plastic: the modern day twine and paper.

An apple a day. . .

Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it.

Doctors are expensive (and also, in case you hadn’t noticed, the sky is blue). Stay healthy by exercising, eating well, and maintaining proper hygiene (and by walking carefully down stairs) and, hopefully, you’ll save on doctors bills. Knowing how to deal with everyday illnesses at home is also useful, and Child provides a fairly extensive list of remedies. You might want to rely on something a little more recent.

Choose your lot.

Says Germanicus, ‘There is my dunce of a classmate has found his way into Congress, and is living amid the perpetual excitement of intellectual minds, while I am cooped up in an ignorant country parish, obliged to be at the beck and call of every old woman, who happens to feel uneasy in her mind.’

‘Well, Germanicus, the road to political distinction was as open to you as to him; why did you not choose it?’

‘Oh, I could not consent to be the tool of a party; to shake hands with the vicious, and flatter fools.’

Since Germanicus is wise enough to know the whistle costs more than it is worth, is he not unreasonable to murmur because he has not bought it?

Could you be earning more money than you are now? I could be, if I was willing to make certain sacrifices. I tried that; it made me an unhappy person. So I elected to do what makes me happy, for less money. We’re still comfortable, paying our debts and putting money into savings, but things are definitely tighter. But you won’t hear me complain: I’ve chosen my lot. Not all of us have the luxury of choice, but to the best of our ability we should choose what makes us happy, whether that’s a fat bank account or more leisure time or even (perish the thought!) goats, and then get down to the business of living well.

“Camels eat grass; grass needs water. So did their masters’ crops, whose bounty begat a population boom of humans. More humans needed more herds, pasture, fields, and more water—all just at the wrong time. No one could have known that the rains had shifted. So people an their flocks range farther and grazed harder, assuming that the weather would return to what it had been, and that everything would grow back the way was.
It didn’t. The more they consumed, the less moisture transpired skyward and the less it rained. The result was the hot Sahara we see today. Only it used to be smaller:Over this past century, the numbers of Africa’s humans and their animals have been rising, and now temperatures are, too. This leaves the precarious sub-Saharan tier of Sahel countries at the brink of sliding into the sand.”

Alan Weisman wrote this in his book The World Without Us, which provides not only a view of the constructive destruction the Earth would offer human structures should humans disappear (say, were we wiped out by a deadly virus) but also a history of the world from archaeological, anthropological, botanical, and agricultural standpoints. As a nerd, this book is completely engaging- I felt as though my knowledge of the world was expanding simultaneously in every direction. It engaged every aspect of my knowledge and comprehension of the world.

It was also refreshing, and terrifying. Refreshing knowing the earth would reclaim much of the surface damages caused by humans within a few hundred years. Terrifying that it could not reclaim all of the damages.