Toolbox Wars

I had been obsessing on the nuance of tool usage for the past 4 years. How I need five types of 5mm hex wrenches for various approaches to similar bolts. How I need certain things from certain manufacturers, and nothing from others, and again other things from my own stranded tool sets back in Arizona. And how I must always scavenge preferred tools from random boxes and empty bench drawers in every shop I work in; because if a shop is not in disarray is it even a shop? I have disdain for such things, but they are beyond the scope of this concern. A shelter of my own tools is the solution until, or this is, the revolution in A Bicycle Repairman’s drudgery. Own your own tools.

And the YouTube array of team mechanics who have built out their own manageries of tool sets for their work on the road has been an enjoyable pastime. This got me to thinking and I had not found a better design for durability vs portability than the larger Pelican cases; and in hot colors it became a fetish same as shoes, gloves, eyewear, myself, and stickers. I could have many but for the price. The Pelican case people have a seemingly cornered market, and so I bought in, and withy durable, responsible mind, quickly stashed any ill feeling for the cost. I know the costs of this project will be in the $1000’s by the time it’s done. Kinda like building out a Coconino frameset. In this way I am double dipping on my entitlement to the American Dream. Amex. Mc. Visa. Go.

The foam inlays are a strange yet necessary thing. Seemingly a best worse case thing. Foam? Like the detritus of so many highway culverts and breakdown lanes. Something less than reasonable. Temporary, yet it lasts forever. Excessive control, or even burdensome in prominence. Foam. I guess. I’ve got no better idea for now.

I had evolved from a bag of tangled handles and broaches and facets; twisted things and jumbled, irksome; the 10mm socket beyond reach, somewhere in a dark crevasse of a canvas stitch. Tacky, or shadetree.

The place of bicycles in the world DOES NOT REQUIRE NITROGEN REFILLS. These things are fucking simple machines built from the schematics of grade school engineering assignments. The manufacturers are unable to abide by this, and coerce your money as you assume your battery operated legs and derilla are saving you from some painfully exhaustive need to understand the mechanical horse you ride, and yourself. Just imagine needing to trim a barrel adjuster at the bar because your shift speed up or down a cassette is imprecise. Imagine the power you could have within your ability to repair your bike, and your mind and your love, of this one moment we all have. But instead, you are removed again and again from your completely repairable simple machine, and your responsibility for your life, and your responsibility to love. The extraction of personal responsibility is a last corruption of the paradigm we find ourselves in. Do not obey.

I digress… There are few other alternatives to the game-board obtuseness of these foam trays. Yet, as I aquiesce, everything will have its place and I will place each thing and upon performance I will need requisite a banquet table to display my productive capabilities, same as back at 5th grade science fair. I refuse to go down without maintaining upward eye contact the entire time. I have specific things of my downtrodden heritage to imbibe and sustain my contempt. As is, was, and as will always be, I am a Bicycle Repairman.This Pelican will house the best curated set of tooling my cycling life has known, to include but not be limited to:

• My preferred sharpened spoke. In my possession for over 27 years now. It is quite possible Yard Sale wrought it. If you don’t believe me I can shiv you with it if you pay me my travel expenses.
• My electrical tape and my exclusive knowledge of how to wrap bars (yet another trammeled detail lost to SramPon Bicycle Corp and reddit).
• Scissors from Mom, those decades back again.
• My cast-hub classic and reasonably unmarred Park 3-way, stolen from Domenic’s Cycling Imports on Ash and Mill, back in 1998, an irreplaceable heisted antique.
• My ball-tipped 5mm T-handle. Know when to use it. Know when to walk away.
• my feeler gauges from my Dad. I may never tune another Windsor 4bbl, yet here they will forever remain until I am, happily, dust again. There may come a time again when the C.I. dominates for a brief few years more soon.
• My peens, my mallet, my hammer; let no bearing not get spanked.
• my spun-wood handled multi-tool stamped ‘1899’ that I found in the dirt of Glen Helen raceway in the early 90’s. Something a Pop Pop lost long ago; if only he could know it has been cherished ever since it was exhumed from that incredible Glen Helen soil in a haze of two-stroke fumes and dreams.
• My custom built Bleeding-Edge©®™ syringe kits to improve on SRAM’s©®™ inability to create a mindless-plastic-snap-in-guide to solve the problem of a mechanic’s innate abilities or lack thereof.
• A copious display of my most meaningful stickers donned across the internal and external surfaces of this water-tight orange plastic box; relics of the past 25+ years, held onto for this moment or whenever I am in Mexico and a kid asks for some stickers. A wide gamut of proof of my culture.
• My limited selection of Snap-On pieces. Warranty replacement no questions asked, for life. You get what you pay for.even when you stole it.
• My Knipex pliers.
• My unmarred cone wrenches.
• My Bondus hex wrench set so well used it is polished from handwork and callous skin alone.
• My unbroken ez-outs.
• My uncrimped cable guide routing cables.
• My unmarred flush-cut snips for all those horrible and vicious zip-ties.
• My lovely torque T’s; 5.6-6.8nm. Stupid is as stupid does.
• My torque wrench. No question.
• My peanut butter wrench (RIP, Ernesto).
• All things, I never have to grind my teeth about sharing with another hack mechanic of no care for.
• Possession is the law. Full stop.

In this way I am a Bicycle Repairman. Opinionated as is requisite of any journeyman trade. Vocation, again. This is what happens when I stop resisting the entropy of my life and accept the beauty of my inner world and how I can leverage my love to endure the essential consumption this exterior world requires, as we are all slave who live within it.

As there are no more fields to hoe, no more big game to cull, not anything but debt and work, I choose this small life, like a mole, I grovel thread pitch and grease types for life, buried in the cacophony. Bound by bicycle as promise lost to a world of navel gazing garbage.

Applied mechanics are entirely about control, and the best mechanics build their foam boards for peace of mind almost entirely. I am no different when I am on the clock. In the freedom of my mind, I rarely care otherwise. It is the professional in me that requires I attend to my toolset in this way. In this I am a passenger of our collective capitalist failure. I abide. A division of work, personified.

The layout and cutting will commence in days. The assemblage of my mind is still gardening as to what and where; prioritizing layers, the first things I need, the last things I want. Additions are needed. A very select query of Abbey products, and Unior, and errata. Mostly I try to avoid Park tools, but not out of contempt. Purely because Park is bellwether and I am forever the Gnome. Calvin deserves his pension even though I have to assume it is a friend of Sheldon’s still paying the server bill.

And so it goes.