Thursday, February 10, 2011

True Dat

Today I trued my wheels on my Capo. What does it mean to be true? "Consistent with reality, not false or erroneous." That's how The Free Dictionary defines it. In this case "reality" is a stationary object on a "truing stand" that sits just a millimeter from the side of the wheel as it spins. Ideally, I should be able to spin my wheel with this stationary reality less than a millimeter away from it and not run into it. It's good to parallel reality closely. It's not good to run into reality. If you run into reality, you are on a a wobbly cycle. Every time you pass this section, you will run into reality. Same place, same problem.

If you have a problem that you are running into (bear with me now, we are still talking about wheels), the solution is tension. You need to tension the wheel on one side and release tension on the other. After you've done this and the problem seems to have gone, it is important that you "stress" the wheel. This is an important component to being true. The wheel needs to be placed under stress to release the wound up tension that is in the spokes. Metaphor? Absolutely. You may have to go back and do the tension thing again because, when placed under stress, problems are revealed that you couldn't see before (I should stop now. This is too good).

Some days I can relate to this metaphor a lot. Some days I feel wobbly. Some days I feel tension. Some days I feel under stress. It's just a part of the road to being true I guess. I can run from it or I can embrace it. The great part about a true wheel is it is strong. Really strong. Strong enough to stand up to the abuse that these guys put them through:



So I trued my wheels, which didn't actually take much effort, because they were pretty true to begin with. Then I rode home and thought about my wheels and all the stress that I put them through. They have always been good to me. For that, I am grateful.

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