Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I'd go broke as a motorcycle mechanic

Two hours to change a tire?!

Now, granted, I don't have a tire machine. But mostly, I'm just slow :-(. Popping the tire on and off the rim took me about 30 minutes of that time. The rest was spent taking wheel off, cleaning up the wheel so I could stick weights to it, checking out the tube and powdering it and inserting it into the new tire (question: How do you fish that $%@! valve stem through that teeny little hole when all you have is a tiny crack between tire and rim to work through?!), carefully positioning the tire so the heavy part was opposite the valve stem, then there's balancing which because a KLR uses ball bearings I can do on its own bearings (as vs. roller bearings or taper bearings) but it's still a fiddly process. And finally put the wheel back on, adjust the chain, put the brakes back on, torque everything down, ...

I'm sure glad I make my living with computers, not fixing motorcycles. 'Cause I'd go broke quick if I had to make my living fixing motorcycles... I can fix most anything, but I'm just slow. And I ain't even got the excuse of bein' an old man like Gordon over at Alternate Brain, sigh...

-- Badtux the Slow Penguin

2 comments:

  1. If you worked on them all the time you would get faster at it.

    But it doesn't matter how long it takes, it's just a penguin screwing around amongst all the monkeys that are screwing around.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll stick to screwing around with printing presses. They are rather loud and dangerous to be around if you don't know what you're doing around them, but they are at least stationary. And that's a good thing...

    ReplyDelete

Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.

WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.