Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Being here has become a major numbing experience. In fact, my daily patterns aren't that much different from what they were in Taiwan in terms of isolation and avoidance, although I do have mandatory social exposure to my parents, and I see my brother and his family every several days.The first week crawled by, but then the second week zipped by and slipped away before I even noticed. All I do really is putter around, falling into all the same old patterns and habits. It's just more luxurious here.
My parents have a nice, spacious house in quiet suburbia as opposed to my noisy, dark urban apartment in Taipei. I've pulled out my guitar (Takamine) and bass (Spector) and have my drums (Yamaha) set up in the basement, and playing them has been sweet – much better quality instruments than I have access to in Taiwan.
My bike here is older, and almost failed as a result, but now that I have it working, I can feel how it is just a better quality bike than my Giant. It's a Peugeot that I bought in San Francisco 12 or 13 years ago and the gear shifters are outdated.
When I pulled the bike out, the shifters didn't work. Well, they worked one way, but not the other, so once the chain was on the largest ring in front, I couldn't downshift, and when the chain got to the lowest gear in back, I couldn't upshift.
The first place to which I took the Peugeot was Bike Masters in Englewood, where I've been going to since I was a kid. Ownership has changed, though, and the current owner is Korean. He took one look at the shifters and wouldn't give them a second glance, wouldn't even touch it. "Buy a new bike!", he said, not even making eye contact. I scoffed at his inability on the way out.
The second place I went to was Bicycle Workshop in Tenafly and they – Spanish speakers, although I don't know where they are from – were better with an explanation, maintaining there was no company support or parts for this kind of shifters, but they had one last ditch procedure they could try, but emphasized that they couldn't guarantee it would work.
It sounded like they'd seen this problem before since they prompted me with a question about how long it's been since I rode the bike – they suspected it hadn't been ridden in a long time, and I confirmed that it had been years since I rode it.
I gleaned that because of the long period of inactivity, grease had built up in a certain part of the shifters preventing them from "grabbing". They were going to soak them for several days in a solution to clear away the grease. Almost a week later, they called and told me to pick it up, it was working.
The weather has been hit or miss, though, and I've mostly been riding on a trainer in the basement for 30-60 minutes. I went out once on a sunny day, but quickly discerned it was too chilly for my liking and just rode to the north end of town and back. Barely 5 miles there and back. Small town.
But what am I doing? What's the point? I'm even boring myself now.
