OCB and Pedal Power

  Over the past couple of days, I have been doing some volunteering at Pedal Power and Our Community Bikes, in Vancouver. It's amazing, after so many years of riding a bike and feeling familiar with a bike, I am learning so much.
  I have only learned basic maintenance so far; I have learned how to over-haul (OVH) and true a wheel. Over-hauling a tire means cleaning and inspecting the tire's axel and ball bearings, then replacing and regreasing them. It is a tedious task and I was surprised by how much attention I had to administer when doing the procedure. I spent an hour and a half doing an over-haul one day and then another two hours the next day!
  Truing the tire is making sure there is equal tension within the spokes to ensure the wheel spins without curving to one side. It's a lot easier to do, believe me! When you tighten a spoke it pulls the wheel in the direction that the spoke is facing. If you tighten one spoke a half-turn on one side of the wheel, you have to give the spokes beside it a quarter-turn each (keeping a balance of tension). I don't recall what the device is that holds the wheel, but it pretty much looks like a combination of arms that work like vices. One set of arms holds the wheel, acting like the part that holds the wheel on a bike, and the other set of arms comes together towards the rim of the tire (so you can easily identify which direction the wheel is curving and make the appropriate changes).
  After I had volunteered myself for a couple of hours, the shop let me use their equipment to fix my bike at a lower cost! I took advantage and fixed my brakes. A couple days earlier, I was biking to the gym and was just about hit by a Porsche 911 Carrera (probably my favorite car type, definitely my favorite car manufacturer). I knew I was taking a risk because I virtually had no experience stopping without brakes and I almost paid for it. Schieza! At least it wasn't soccer mom driving a Volvo, that wouldn't sound as good saying it to somebody in Purgatory or Limbo. Here's to another day!