The Fork: A review of Spaak (a bike shop in Groningen)
A bicycle’s fork connects its handlebar to its front wheel, allowing the rider to change directions. It’s called a fork because like the eating utensil, it’s composed of a base from which prongs protrude. Unlike the utensil however, which can have three, four, or even five prongs, a bicycle’s fork has only two, which attach to the front wheel’s axle. In this way, it’s more like a carving fork than an eating one. Size-wise, it’s midway between a carving fork and a pitchfork. In terms of prong sharpness, which in a minute will become relevant information, it’s a lot blunter than eating/carving/pitchforks, but a little sharper than a tuning fork, which is also bi-pronged.
Fork preparation as part of bicycle assembly includes the labored process of attaching a small metal ring, called the crown race, onto the base of the fork’s “handle”, known as the steering tube. This metal ring whose exact function is outside the scope of this review is supposed to fit extremely tightly on the steering tube, so tightly in fact that it’s manufactured with a radius that’s a hair smaller than the metal tube onto which it’s supposed to fit, creating a near-literal square peg in a round hole situation.
Imagine a man, happily married and deeply in love. He’s afflicted with an ego-annihilating love, the kind that makes beauty out of life’s trivialities and turns its tribulations into mush. For this and other reasons, he’s never taken off his wedding ring in the decade since he got married. And as happily married people are apt to do, he had developed a healthy indifference to societal norms that govern body weight, so that he proudly let himself go to the point that the metal ring and his ring finger have taken the form of an hourglass. And this had been fine and dandy, causing no alarming constriction, and serving as a memento of his deep spousal devotion and as a half-decent conversation piece—until he was due for an MRI scan whose medical necessity was non-negotiable.
Picture now the pains to which the man must go to remove this ring—a procedure that can include unintended uses of dental floss, sagacious manipulations of temperature to cause expansion/contraction of ring and finger, lubricants of varying scents and viscosities, all manner of push pull jiggle wiggle, and ultimately, if none of the above worked, the resort to medical professionals, and the defiling of his beloved ring with power tools.
Now imagine the reverse of this process, that is, the fitting of an extremely tight ring on the base of an extremely happy, love-afflicted, fat finger—except both ring and finger are made of hardened loveless metal—and you’d have yourself an accurate picture of the type of ordeal installing a crown race onto a bicycle fork can be.
The professional solution to this is simple: the crown race setting tool: a one-job contraption comprising a metal tube that’s open on one end, which fits onto the steering tube in a scabbard-like manner, sliding all the way until it makes contact with the cursed crown race. Then, the application of blunt force—unimaginably large amounts of it—to the other end of the contraption, using a hammer or mallet.
If you’re building a bike at home, DIY-style, and you don’t build bikes often, then buying such a tool is wasteful. It’s like buying a Gomco clamp if you decide to get an adult male circumcision. Sure, it’s the right tool for the job, but when else are you going to use it?
Luckily, DIY and budget-friendly solutions exist (for installing crown races), the most popular of which is using a cheap PVC pipe to make a replica of the proper metal tool. This is what yours truly opted to do for his own crown race snafu.
After cutting down the PVC pipe to an appropriate length, and placing it over the crown race-equipped steering tube, I grabbed my mallet and hammered away. It became obvious after about twenty minutes that the crown race would not budge under the measly weight of PVC and my feeble malleting.
Then, on the cusp of of giving up on my ambition of an unassisted bicycle build, it occurred to me that I could generate much more force by letting the solid ground do the job of the mallet, that is, by grabbing the fork by its prongs and slamming as hard as I could the crown race-equipped and PVC-sheathed steering tube onto the ground.
An internet search later revealed that this strategy was common, and not in the least stupid, if one can intuit the basic rules of our physical universe. In fact, it’s rather sensible, because what’s Earth but a huge anvil made of dirt?
What’s not sensible was the manner in which I almost went about doing it. The law-abiding, tax-paying, God-fearing, biomechanically-aware, and conscionable way of slamming the fork onto the ground is to grip both prongs of the fork, one in each hand, and slamming the whole thing onto the ground with the same motion one slams a car’s hood shut, and doing so from a standing or kneeling position.
Instead of that, I found myself genuflected with the fork’s prongs in my hands and flush against my midriff, and I came within seconds of pressing my weight with full force against the fork’s sharp ends (the so called “dropouts”) and into the ground, a motion that—had it been completed—would have impaled me instantly.
For a brief moment, I experienced that innocent bemusement at having done, or almost done, something so incredibly stupid. That adulthood rite of passage and common denominator of casual idiocy: the ‘What was I thinking?’-chuckle-shrug sequence. But then, there was more.
I saw in my mind’s eye the fork’s blades goring my midriff. I could see it happen under my chin, in cinematic symmetry, causing equal damage to one set of the vital organs that come in pairs. I was reacting in voiceless terror to the sight of my impalement.
Blood trickled down my fork and I saw myself die.
What passed before my eyes wasn’t quite my life, as the platitude of near-death goes, but the life posterior to mine—the immediate posthumous aftermath that I won’t be around to witness. How immediate? I wondered. How long would it take them to find me?
I saw the friend I entrusted with my spare keys, dreading the misery that baited him behind my door. I felt guilty over my breach of contract, for having upped his spare key duties from watering plants to playing coroner. Coroner, and then casualty officer.
“Take a seat, ma’am. Your son was killed on the altar of buffoonery.”
In my chest I felt a heart beat that wasn’t mine, fast and arrhythmic. It was an amalgam of the hearts that knew me, hearing the news of my death. Their pain, pity, and confusion became my own. Some glaringly steady heartbeats were there too, of those who barely knew me, acquaintances, unfazed by my gruesome end.
I stared at my corpse, fresh at room temperature, its stigmata one hundred and ten millimetres apart. The stench of putrefaction was losing to the smells of blood, bike grease, and degreaser. Swift exsanguination had left me with no signs of suffering—my eyes were closed and I was in peace, smiling. Seeing myself in that state, I felt deep love and compassion, beneath the horror and shame that lingered. You’d know what I mean if you’ve ever seen a photo of yourself sleeping. You’re kinder to that version of yourself, because it’s unconscious, not making the mistakes, not even the faces, that make you hate yourself.
More upsetting than seeing my slapstick death was picturing my parents’ reaction to it. There’s no greater injustice you could inflict on your parents than dying. “How long will they mourn me? Every motherfuckin’ day, homie.” But it’s not every day, Big Syke, not really. After fourteen years, I no longer mourn my homie. But I imagine his mother still does.
My waking nightmare came to an end. I was no longer dead nor dying, just drained and despondent.
I felt that I deserved a gush of dopamine to cure the nightmare hangover, so I went on my phone and sent a message to a local cycling WhatsApp group, where I disclosed the details of my crown race debacle (naturally, leaving out the illusory accidental Seppuko). A bike mechanic at a local bike shop (abbr. LBS), who is also a cyclist and member of the community, replied to my message, commending my perseverant DIY spirit, and at the same time inviting me to the LBS if my attempts to seat the crown race continued to fail.
They did continue to fail and I did go to the LBS, Spaak (Groningen) in this case— which despite having an identity crisis for being one of those trendy hybrid coffee shops that are part coffee shop, part whatever the fuck —is quite a nice place indeed. And said mechanic managed to install my crown race in less than a minute. To top this off, he insisted on performing this service pro bono.
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There is something trite and annoying about near-death experiences, not so much in themselves, but in the way they’re meta-experienced; from the incessant religious explanations, to the newfound appreciation for life, or the holier than thou self-transformation after the death encounter. It’s all too much on the nose for my taste. If you almost died, that’s ok. I’m equal parts happy and sorry for you. But it doesn’t make you special. You are not better than me.
As a humbler and safer substitute, I prefer the faux near death encounter, which is how I like to label the experience I described here. You don’t need to almost die to spew pseudo-spiritual new age nonsense. You just need to think you almost died.
The chasm between death and near-death is traversed by fate, which I can only hope is on your side. But to cross the bridge between near death and faux near death, you just need your imagination. And when it comes to building bicycles, not the least deadly pastime by any means, here’s how to stay on the safe side— on the side of faux near death, and away from actual near death, or God forbid, death itself: don’t shy away from your LBS. And if you’re in Groningen, then Spaak is an excellent choice.
Final verdict: 5/5 star nuts.