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Progress, after a fashion
Jun. 6th, 2020 07:05 pmTwelve or thirteen years ago I picked up a vintage blue-and-white Italian bike frame to build up for fun, fast-ish rides. Shortly after that I bought a very similar (but red) bike on Craigslist, put 144 miles on it in the first 48 hours I owned it, and then proceeded to work on that bike instead (including some work that really should have happened before I put any miles on it at all, but see above re "fun").
The red bike has started to have some rust issues and the next project for it is to strip off all of the parts, have the rust and paint knocked off, deal with its paint at length, and generally do more work than fits into the amount of time I want to be without a fun bike. So I have, for years now, been planning to build up the blue and white bike with the parts from the red one as the first step of that project. But first, it needed some work.
Like a lot of people I find myself facing a lot of things lately that I can only sporadically deal with, and also looking at reality a lot more closely than is exactly comfortable. I try to deal as I can, but sometimes I need a really powerful procrastinatory device, one that has some theoretical use to keep me engaged and where I can feel like I'm getting somewhere. You know the drill -- organizing the bookshelves, cleaning out the basement, maybe a work project for those of us who have jobs that give us suitable projects. Something that gives me the illusion of control.
So today I hauled out that blue and white bike frame, spent a bunch of time getting dirt and sticker residue off of it, put on new branding stickers that I'd picked up a while ago, and hit it with a thin clear coat to protect the stickers and maybe slow down the rust some before the same fate befalls it as did the red one.
As a bonus, I used up two of the physical "to-do" items on my workbench, which gives me the physical and psychic swap space to get some actually useful work done.
We'll see how that goes.
The red bike has started to have some rust issues and the next project for it is to strip off all of the parts, have the rust and paint knocked off, deal with its paint at length, and generally do more work than fits into the amount of time I want to be without a fun bike. So I have, for years now, been planning to build up the blue and white bike with the parts from the red one as the first step of that project. But first, it needed some work.
Like a lot of people I find myself facing a lot of things lately that I can only sporadically deal with, and also looking at reality a lot more closely than is exactly comfortable. I try to deal as I can, but sometimes I need a really powerful procrastinatory device, one that has some theoretical use to keep me engaged and where I can feel like I'm getting somewhere. You know the drill -- organizing the bookshelves, cleaning out the basement, maybe a work project for those of us who have jobs that give us suitable projects. Something that gives me the illusion of control.
So today I hauled out that blue and white bike frame, spent a bunch of time getting dirt and sticker residue off of it, put on new branding stickers that I'd picked up a while ago, and hit it with a thin clear coat to protect the stickers and maybe slow down the rust some before the same fate befalls it as did the red one.
As a bonus, I used up two of the physical "to-do" items on my workbench, which gives me the physical and psychic swap space to get some actually useful work done.
We'll see how that goes.
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