Bicycle, Back Spasm

I did ALL THE CHORES yesterday, and got a back spasm or two for my pains while taking apart a bicycle.

…perhaps I should explain.

Last summer (I think? Or maybe the summer before?) I spotted a bigger bicycle than the one the Little Prince currently had at a garage sale. He liked it, I dropped a few dollars, and he rode it until the wheels both blew. (He’s, uh, very active.) Time passed, a small royalty check came (hooray!) and I managed to save enough of it to get both kids new bikes.

That left the problem of what to do with the Prince’s old one. We could give the small one to the next-door neighbour’s little boy, but I couldn’t put a “free” sign on a bike with two blown wheels and feel reasonably good about it. So it sat behind the garage for a long while.

You know, I thought one day, while spreading compost, if you took the wheels and stuff off, it would make a reasonable trellis for peas and cucumbers. You could even string some twine from it to the uprights… The idea teased and tickled, but the time (and let’s face it, the weather) never seemed right. Cue up yesterday, when I was up at five AM to take another set of neighbours to the airport. Maybe lack of sleep made me ambitious; I took both tool sets outside and hoped I wouldn’t need anything gigantic.

There’s a certain satisfaction to looking at something and figuring out how to take it apart. The seat was easy, the handlebars were rusted tight–that’s okay, they’ll provide support for peas–but the wheels were a little challenging. Nevertheless, I bloody well persisted. After a bit of kneeling on concrete and wrestling, my back started to inform me that my Earth shoes were not proper for this sort of work, and furthermore, it was goddamn unhappy with quite a few things going on that day.

There was a lot of creative swearing. I think the term “monkeyfucking sideways bruncher” came out, and I’m not sure what exactly it means, but it sounded good at the time. thank God I left the dogs inside–their brand of “helping” would have had dire results. Of course, Miss B was pissy with me for daring to perform such surgery without her supervision, and Odd, having been freshly washed, complained of being looooooonely while I was outside for a mere half-hour. *eyeroll*

I have a long scrape down my right leg, and my back’s a little happier today. The denuded frame is in the garden, and of all the things I feel good about accomplishing yesterday, that’s the biggest. Go figure. I didn’t take the chain off, that can happen later.

Now, if only the damn squirrels would leave it alone…

I’m feeling pretty redneck gardener.