upkeep

Popping to the flat to perform some sort of landlordly task makes me nervous in a slightly different way to other nervousness-inducing social interactions. Doubtless some of the oddness is due to the venue always being the flat, where I lived for ten years, whilst my position as landlord is effectively the service provider, with them as the customer. I was only installing a curtain rail and curtain but was thus also slightly nervous about the impending wall/drill/fastening, though fortunately this turned out to be on a bit of the replastered wall which responds much better to cavity toggles than the old lath-and-plaster shite, though (despite thorough pilot-holing) a chunk of paint larger than the area covered by the rail bracket still managed to flake free as I was drilling one of the holes out to full-size. Being able to bicycle there is fortunately reasonably relaxing, even when carrying (or wielding) a curtain rail which had to protrude more to the rear to stop it fouling the cables at the front.

After getting that out of the way (and getting back in plenty of time for the boy's shutdown procedure despite stopping to chat to our old upstairs neighbour for a bit) I still had time to attack newoldbike's rear wheel problems. The spare freewheeled rear wheel from oldbike (the 1991 original, not the 2004 replacement which I gave away a few weeks back) had a bent QR skewer which had taken out the axle spindle in an attempt to remove it. With much forcible persuasion I eventually got the axle out, enabling the bent skewer to be sawn through to enable the other half of the axle to be freed, though then neither end's cups and spacers could be shifted even slightly, preventing their re-use with newoldbike's spindle (in much worse shape than oldbikes). Fortunately newoldbike wasn't new enough to have been given sealed bearings in its hubs which meant that newoldbike is now rideable with its original spindle and cones, the twenty-year-old bearings/hub/wheel (with two fresh spokes) in between and the cheap extra eBay tyre on the outside, which ought to do until I can get hold of a splined tool thing for removing the freewheel from the original newoldbike wheel in order to a: replace the broken spoke or b: replace every spoke.