Wednesday October 22, 2014
7:15 a.m. Bird Nest Guest House
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

I did get up the energy to go out to the bike shops. However, I did not return with the bike. We ran into another problem, and I spent some time trying to get that sorted out, and by the time everything was ready, it was later in the day. Even then, I got on my bike and was ready to start riding, but it began to rain. I knew it could turn into a powerful rain storm, and I decided to leave my bike at the bike shop one more time and take the LRT home.

The problem this time around was also with the seatpost. I may have mentioned already that in the attempts to remove it from the frame, the top part of the seatpost had been ripped right out of the tube. It’s not surprising in retrospect, but I didn’t really know how the thing was put together. Some seatposts are made out of one solid piece of metal. Others have two parts. There is the tube itself. And then there is the part that attaches to the saddle. This is a separate piece and it is more or less just jammed down into the tube and held in place by friction and some glue. Jason – the most knowledgable of the mechanics – had repeatedly warned me that in trying to remove a seatpost, you should never grab it from the top and twist it from there. It turns out that I misunderstood him. I thought he was talking about all seatposts and was referring to how there would be a greater risk of twisting or bending the seapost if you grab it at the top. Better to grab it lower down. However, he wasn’t saying that. Most seatposts were one solid piece, and it would be okay to grab them at the top. He was saying that in my case, with MY seatpost, you shouldn’t grab it from the top. He saw right away that it was a two-parter and it you grabbed it from the top, you would rip the top part right off. Other bike mechanics were not aware of this and they had used big pipe wrenches on the top portion of the seatpost and twisted it from there. The result was that when I was at PedalSpot for the second time and the mechanics tried again to remove the seatpost, the top portion of my seatpost came right off. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I had this idea that it was meant to be removed and that you could just stick it back into place. It turns out that that is not true at all.

It’s true that you can just stick the top part back in, but there is no guarantee that it will stay in place and that your seat will not rock back and forth and creak and shake and move. Therefore, when I was reunited with my bike, and I had gone to Bike Pro to thank Jason and say goodbye, I asked about getting a new seatpost. I didn’t trust the mechanical integrity of this old one now that it had a big hole drilled through it, had been hammered and twisted and bent, and now had the top ripped right off. Jason was more than happy to help, and he rummaged through their supply of seatposts and came up with his recommendation. It was clearly a superior seatpost to the one that was on the bike. It was a single solid piece of aluminum, had much smaller and more technically designed parts, and, best of all, was much lighter. I gave Jason the okay to put it on the bike and he set to work. The catch was that I didn’t have enough money to pay him, and I would, once again, have to leave my bike there and come back the next day with money. The seat post cost about $40.

Unfortunately, we never even got to that point. Jason had put my saddle onto the new seatpost, but then he discovered that it wouldn’t fit into my bike’s downtube. It was too large. He was very surprised and after he took some measurements and looked at my old seatpost, he informed me that my bike had an unusual and rare seatpost size. Of course it did. None of the seatposts in his shop would fit. It seems that when you ride a 15-year-old bike, the problem of compatibility with newer parts is neverending. Jason tried to find an old seatpost of the proper size, but was unsuccessful. We had no choice but to put the old seatpost back in.

When we did this, Jason did a proper measurement of my inseam and he referred to some technical documents and set my seatpost to the proper height. I’m sure he did everything correctly, but whatever the experts say is the proper height, it wasn’t proper for me. It was way too high and very uncomfortable.

Anyway, I rode my bike back to PedalSpot to see if perhaps they had a seatpost that would fit my bike. This was a bit awkward because we had had a big “goodbye” scene and we had taken pictures together – them posing with me beside my bike as if I was actually a guy riding his bike around the world instead of a guy just hanging out and spending money on bike parts and cameras. But I really wanted to replace this seatpost, and I went back there despite the awkwardness. Their regular seatposts – the ones that apparently fit 99.9999% of all the bikes in the world – were the same size as the ones at Bike Pro, and they were too large for my bike. I explained my concerns to Eddie, the mechanic who had removed my seatpost, and he said that I needn’t worry. When he had put the two parts of my seatpost back together, he had crimped the top of the tube to make it much tighter. Then he had hammered the top part in. He said it was as good as new and very strong. I was a bit doubtful and didn’t look completely convinced, so Eddie suggested that if I was really worried about it, we could drill a hole through the top part of the seatpost where the two sections join and we could insert a bolt to really hold them together. I saw problems with this approach, but I figured it couldn’t hurt and I let him do it. My concern was not with the two parts suddenly separating. This this bolt would certainly keep the two parts together. One part was not going to suddenly fall out of the other part with that bolt holding them together. My concern was more with the top part gradually becoming loose and unstable. The the constant rocking back and forth of your body on the saddle applies a lot of force, and I can see the two parts of the seatpost coming loose. Then the seat would have a bit of play in it and it would feel loose as you rode. The bolt would hold them together, but it wouldn’t maintain a solid and tight fit. I’ve had enough experience of such things to know that pieces that were stuck together at the factory during the original manufacturing process almost never go back together as solidly when they are broken apart. It’s best to just replace the thing. But at the moment, that wasn’t possible, and I had to be satisfied with the BFH approach. It’s fitting, now that I think about it, that my bike has a big bolt sticking right through the top of the seatpost – the “neck” of the bike. I’ve been thinking of this bike as a Frankenstein’s monster and now it has the bolt through the neck to prove it.

It was at this point that I got back on the bike and was about to ride away and it started to rain. Rather shamefacedly, I asked Eddie if he’d mind my leaving the bike at his shop one more time. To these guys, I must seem the most pathetic cyclist ever. I don’t know enough to maintain and lubricate my seatpost, and a bit of rain sends me running for cover. But I had seen the rain here in action, and I didn’t want to risk it. That turned out to be a wise decision because in a short time, the thunderstorm began and it was a doozy. It was a major storm and the rain fell so heavily that you couldn’t even see through it. Had I tried to ride back to Chinatown, I would have been a wet and miserable cyclist.

From this story, you might think I got away from the bike shops without spending any money, but you’d be wrong. I did find a way to spend some money. It’s another fairly typical story. This one involves the rubber handlebar grips.

Several lifetimes ago when I originally put together this Frankenstein’s monster, it came with thick rubber grips on the handlebars. Then while I was in Ethiopia, I discovered that DEET – which makes up 99% or 100% of the insect repellant Muskol – actually dissolves rubber. I applied a lot of Muskol to my hands and then rubbed it over my arms and neck. But when I put my hands back on the rubber grips, the Muskol transferred to the rubber and began to dissolve it. I think it was a combination of the Muskol on my hands plus the Muskol from my arms and neck as it rolled down my arms in sweat. In any event, the rubber became sticky and gooey and became a real pain. And me being me, rather than just replacing the grips right away, I lived with it. I kept thinking about replacing the rubber grips, but I never actually did it. I did make a few attempts, but in typical fashion, the foam and rubber that I found in bike shops was always too small to fit over my handlebars. Then technology changed and I never did see simple rubber grips – just thick rubber tubes – that you slid over the handlebars. I only ever saw high-end technical grips with bar ends and locking rocks and all kinds of things. I never knew anything about these things, but they appeared designed to fit only at the end of the handlebars. I didn’t think they could slid inwards towards the middle – as mine would need to do. So for all this time, I’ve been annoyed with my grips but just lived with them. The rubber was disintegrating and leaving black junk on my hands all the time, but I just did nothing about it.

Recently, however, it has gotten much worse. The rubber of the grips was falling apart. It had become brittle and was starting to tear. Worse, it wasn’t tight enough to hold onto the handlebars, and they were spinning around. So I finally asked Jason if he had any kind of rubber grips that could replace them. I knew that his shop had the fancy modern grips with the locking rings, etc. but I assumed they wouldn’t work on my handlebars. However, as with most things, I was wrong about that. Jason immediately went to their display of fancy high-tech grips and started offering me choices from among them. I was startled and asked if they would actually fit on my handlebars since I had to push them in towards the middle. Jason said that was fine. They could go on the handlebars wherever you wanted. I was really surprised about that.

We eventually settled on a pair of fancy grips with a wide, flat base on the extreme outside edges that serve as a palm rest. Jason said that all people on touring bikes use these tyupes of grips as they give support to your hands and are much more comfortable. This was news to me. I never really knew how these grips were designed to work. When I saw them in the bike shops, I assumed the fancy shapes were there just to look cool and raise the price.

Jason quickly removed the bar ends, mirrors, and old grips from my bicycle. As he removed the old grips, he laughed at their horrible condition and asked me how old they were. I said that they were fifteen years old. He laughed again and said that yeah, it was probably time to replace them.

My initial reaction to these grips was that they are wonderful and I wondered how I ever lived without them. Of course, I only used them for the short ride from Bike Pro to PedalSpot, but they felt great. I was worried that the wide, flat sections would be unwieldy or would interfere with shifting, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

And that was the end of that day’s adventures with the bike. No new seatpost but a new Frankenstein bolt and some new handlebar grips. I may or may not go back to PedalSpot to get my bike today. I’m not really in the mood.

I have some other things to complain about. I got a text message saying that the credit on my cell phone was about to expire. It was going to expire that day, in fact. And the message implied that if I allowed the credit to expire, the entire SIM card would be cancelled and I would have to buy a new one. This seemed outrageous to me, but I checked into it and it appeared to be true. So even though I had no need whatever for more phone credit, I went to 7-11. I asked the dude about the minimum amount I could buy. He said the minimum was five ringgits. I bought five ringgits worth of credit and added it to my phone. I was pleased to see that I now had those five ringgits plus the twenty ringgits from before. But I was less than pleased to see that all this credit now expired in just five days. I had to use it all in five days or lose it. That seemed insane to me and I went to a cell phone shop to ask about it. It turns out that it is true. Insane as it sounds, if you buy five ringgits of credit, you have to use it in five days. If you buy ten ringgits of credit, you have to use it within ten days. If you buy thirty ringgits of credit, you have to use it in thirty days. If you don’t, you lose it all and you lose the SIM card. The company essentially forces all of its customers to spend at least one ringgit per day forever. That annoyed me so much that I wrote an email to the company and told them how I felt. It seems crazy to me. It’s like buying a computer and then that company forcing you to buy new software every day or they will come and take away your computer. Once you buy the computer, it’s yours. So they shouldn’t be able to force you to keep buying things. And when you buy phone credit, it should be yours. They should not be allowed to force you to keep buying more credit just for the privilege of having a SIM card. It’s insane. It should be illegal. But that’s life. Large companies and rich people can do anything they want and we little people just have to take it on the chin. Time to go occupy Wall Street, I guess.

I really hate smartphones, by the way. And tablets. And computers. Everyone that stays at the Bird Nest is glued to their smartphones and tablets and computers. Swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping. That’s all anyone ever does. I see people come in the door and within two seconds, they’ve whipped out their smartphone and started swiping. Anyone who sits down anywhere in the guest house instantly gets out their smartphone and starts swiping. I’ll be out in one of the common areas and there will be five other people there and every single one of them will be glued to their smartphones and swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping. It never ends. And it goes on day and night twenty four hours a day. It’s insane. It actually makes me angry for some reason. I want to go up to all these people and slap the phones and tablets out of their hands. It drives me crazy. And I wonder what they could possibly all be doing. I want to ask them what they’re doing. What could be so fascinating and so amazing that they sit there for hours and hours just swiping and swiping and swiping? I watched as one guy stood at the computer at the reception desk for a long time. He finally left that computer and sat down on the sofa. But then he pulled out his large tablet and started swiping as he kept surfing the Internet. He finally put away his tablet and got out his smartphone and started swiping again. It’s a mystery.

Tags: Bike Pro, Bird Nest Guest House, cell phone, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, SIM