Möbius Trip

Roll another number for the road. I’ve got this new bike, this new bike I put together myself and it’s so cool. It makes me happy.

With each turn of the wheel perfection spins nearer. Tuned up, dialed in, drop bar.

It’s got that new bike smell. All of its constituent parts work flawlessly together. I can ride it all the way to Klamath Falls or Mulegé if I take a mind to. This new bicycle in the barn is Möbius Trip with its Chattanooga-made frame trimmed in Italian finery takes me several revolutions closer to cycling inerrancy.

Now, with 500 miles under its Continental tires I have an inkling of its charms.

The first joy was putting it together. Ye Olde Bike Shoppe is a den for doing puzzles. Which parts go where? How do they fit with the other pieces? How to adjust each to make the whole system work as one?

My mechanical abilities are consistent with, if less inventive than, 3rd century BCE Greeks. Those levers, pulleys, inclined planes, wheels and axles our Grecian friends figured out are the essence of the bicycle. They are simple machines. They are not complex machines. That is just my speed: 24 speed. The modern Italians engineering these simple machines make them sophisticated and elegant. I put it all together with wrenches: torque, cone, and allen varieties along with Torx tools.

Then, after all the threading and tightening and adjusting and clamping and measuring and pumping, I put on my bike shoes with their new cleats and without socks and in the late-night darkness stomp down hard and swing my right leg over the saddle and pedal around the block in perfect, amazing silence feeling the chain engage and the brakes grab, hearing the satisfying ka-chunk of shifting gears, feeling the arc of the tires, the cranks.

This will work.

It is so satisfying to have a picture in your head and then make it real.