Bike Shops, Bonding, Brakes, and Burundi

In 2002 I bought a bicycle.  We bonded.  I pedaled it across the US.  In DC it was my car.  In Pakistan it carried me safely through Taliban-country hills.

In 2009 I left the bike behind in Talib-land.  Heartbreaking, perhaps, but for the best.  My cousin Glen tried for comfort: "The thrill of owning a new bike, I find, quickly replaces nostalgia for the old one," he (sort of) said.

And so it is.

I bought my new bicycle at Valencia Cyclery in San Francisco's Mission District.  It's a Specialized Rockhopper, dark gray, with sporty front shocks and new-fangled disc brakes.

While the bike indeed pleased me, all shiny and spiffy, the disc brakes worried.  I knew nothing about their inner workings.  And, I was taking my purchase to Burundi, home of no bike shop to which I would trust my brand new ride.

What if the rotor got mangled in transit? I wondered.  What if the caliper housing broke open on a Burundian rock?  I'd be stuck in a strange and hilly land, brake-less.  The world would turn, and I'd have no way to stop myself while careening through it.

The brakes, happily, survived airline handling.  The rear derailleur (that gear-shifty thingy by the back wheel) didn't.  Some unkind luggage lout piled too much weight on top of my boxed-up baby, and the derailleur bent.

The need to buy an Allen wrench to unbend this part occasioned my first real wrestle with cross-cultural communication in Bujumbura.  For how am I, speaking only English, to tell my need to shop attendants speaking French, Kirundi, and Swahili, but no English?  Options: 1) "Um, um, um..."; 2) increasingly vague hand gestures; 3) doodling incomprehensible shapes on a scrap receipt...

We figured it out, eventually.  Then with helpful email advice from the folks at Valencia Cyclery, I made the crooked straight.

The Cyclery folks were helpful in general, actually, facilitating my purchase during a quick visit to their city in between Pakistan and Burundi.  I'd buy a bike from them any day.

On the day that I did, I had to work quick - I was flying out tomorrow.  So after a little bike-and-owner bonding in some nearby mud, I spread my tools out on a gritty Mission District sidewalk and fit my new cycle back into its shipping box.

"I'm taking this bike to Burundi!" I wanted to yell to random passersby as I worked.  Yes, the thrill of the new was quickly replacing nostalgia for the old.

What I didn't realize was that, once in Bujumbura, sometimes I'd want nothing more than to feel again those gritty American sidewalks beneath my feet.

But I love the orange dirt here, I really do, and I go out now and then to tear it up on my new Specialized.  The disc brakes are great, the bent gear-shifty-thingy shifts its gears as if it never had to be straightened, and when I'm on the bike, I feel a little more at home with every pedal stroke.