The Wheel Which Is True

 I've been building bikes for over thirty years now; not professionally, just as a hobby. Though I've built countless bikes from the frames up, I'm pretty adept sourcing parts, dialing in shifting and brakes, adjusting headsets, etc. Though it can sometimes come with its frustrations, I have always felt empowered that I know how my ride works and how to fix it if something goes wrong.

As a teenager, I was in no rush to get my license, because I had an early taste of the freedom that a bike can afford an adolescent before they turn sixteen. When I was in six grade my dad and I rode up the length of Cape Code from Eastham to the tip of Provincetown--my dad on his Panasonic ten speed and me on my department store mountain bike. 

In middle school, a buddy and I set off to do an eighty mile ride up the Delaware River canal to Milford, New Jersey on the towpath, fueling ourselves on twenty five cent pretzels with mustard from the Carversville General Store.

I started training with a local bicycle club in ninth grade on an 18-speed mountain bike. The infamous "Wednesday Night Rides" were a way for the lawyers in the area to blow off steam mid-week. They rode titanium Merlins and Litespeeds which cost thousands of dollars, and the testosterone was high. But I held my own with them. One guy said he always knew I was behind him because he could hear the rollings of my wide knobby tires as if I were in a car.

We would meet at the Cross Keys shopping center in the early evening and blast off across the river into Jersey to ride as hard and fast and far as possible before the sun went down. This was before cell phones and Google maps, so if you fell out of the peleton slipstream at 30 miles per hour, or blue a gasket on a hill, or flatted, no one is stopping for you. Most times, I also had no idea where I was so it was imperative to keep up. 

Wanting to graduate from a heavy mountain bike to a bonafide racing bike, I offered to mow the lawn of one of the lawyers for the entire summer in exchange for a lease on an Italian-built racing bike that was sitting in his garage--a 1980's era white Colnago with 7 speed friction friction shifting and Columbus steel tubing. The lease eventually ended when I accidentally lobotomized one of his wife's prized flowers with the mower.

I saved up my paper route money and bought an aluminum Cannondale touring bike second hand that was two sizes too big for me, and started racing around that time for a Juniors team in the Lehigh Valley on the velodrome, in stage races, and in fast-paced criteriums. I raced from high school through college, but eventually grew weary of the elitist and snobby attitude of the sport that looked down on people for not having the best equipment. But I never lost my love of cycling itself. 

Working on bikes is meditative for me. I'm not a perfectionist in terms of personality, but when it comes to bikes I'm pretty in tune with those things that would mostly go unnoticed to the common observer--a rubbing brake pad or a sticky shifter, that kind of thing. Though there are a lot of moving parts, bicycles are relatively simple machines, inexpensive to operate, and last indefinitely when well maintained. 

One of the things I enjoyed most, and still do, is building wheels. There is an art to building wheelsets--kind of like pruning bonsai or doing Japanese calligraphy--and they are an important part of the machine because they are what propel you. It requires a sensitivity and attention to detail that is generally not my thing.

There is also an established and predictable order and sequence to building wheels. You start with the lacing pattern--radial, 2-cross, 3-cross, or 4-cross. You also have to determine the length of the spokes to use in relation to the effective rim diameter and the hub flanges, which is calculated mathematically. This must be precise, because if a spoke is too short it will not have enough grab in the nipples, and if they are too long you risk extending the tip of the spoke into the tube, which can contribute to flats.

Professional wheelbuilders will fan the spokes and drop them in the hub eyelets like a master archer, quickly and efficiently. You always start with the key spokes, the first spoke in the wheel, and it has to be positioned properly so that all the other spokes follow in line. Once the key spoke is in place and the wheel is subsequently laced, it's time to move on to what is appropriately called truing. This is where you tighten or loosen the spoke nipples to not only provide the correct tension, but to correct wobbles--akin to tuning a musical instrument. 

There are three things to account for here: 1) dish, which refers to the offset of the hub so that the wheel is centered in the frame; this is usually accomplished by using different spoke lengths for the drive and non-drive sides depending on the cassette offset; 2) lateral truing, which corrects side to side rim deviations and is accomplished by tightening nipples to bring them closer to one side, one at a time; and 3) radial truing, in which you strive for roundness by measuring the up-and-down wobble and correct by tightening or loosening spokes in sets of two or three groupings so that you don't have flat spots. The goal is a 'perfect circle.' All this is accomplished on what's called a 'truing stand.' As you are spinning the wheel slowly, if it scrapes the flat bar, it needs radial correction. There are two adjustable knobs on either side of the rim that you can use for lateral truing.

After these corrections are made--a quarter to half-turn of the nipples at a time--and the wheel is true, the final task is to ensure correct spoke tension. Mechanics usually have access to a tenseometer in the shop, but I rely on feel, flexing the cross-spokes in my hands...again, like tuning a piano by sound. You don't want too much flex, because that results in a weaker wheel; but you don't want spokes too taunt either, as they are more prone to break at the head. You want it like Goldilocks--just right.

As I was rebuilding a rear wheel this afternoon on my commuter bike, it seems there are some similarities in the life of faith. Theology (the study of God, which is not just for academics or clergy) is both an art and a science. There is the lexicon, the methodology, the tradition; but there is also the conscience, the attunement to the Spirit, and intuition involved. 

When you determine what kind of wheel you set out to build, you first determine its use--will it be for loaded touring (strength), for commuting (reliability), for racing (lightness and aerodynamics)? Similarly, we must build according to our vocation and state in life--are we called to the single life? Married life? Religious life? How we build our life of prayer and responsibility will be determined by this. 

We do not improvise, and it is not necessary to (excuse the pun) "reinvent the wheel." We follow the established custom and order--setting the key spoke, lacing with trailing or leading spokes, crossing the spokes at the appropriate junction in the process. The wheel must first be laced before it can be trued. We do this by setting in place God and time for prayer first, and then lacing our work, our family responsibilities, our community, etc. around that. The Church gives us the Mass, the Sacraments, devotionals and ways to pray. She teaches us how to learn (with the Catechism), how to love (with the grace of the Holy Spirit), how to live (with the Commandments), how to serve (with the Beatitudes). As Catholics, we don't have to reinvent the wheel by way of novelty. 

But there is also room for individual 'tuning,' creative expression, and diversity of personalities and spirits. Some religious are more methodological some more intellectual, some more expressive. We have the teachings of St. Thomas as well as the teachings of St. Therese of Lisieux. We have Carmelites, Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carthusians. We also have contemplatives and those in active ministry, scholars and charismatics, and this includes those in the married state as well as vowed religious. We all will tune our spokes in different ways--some through calculation and precise measurement, some by feel. But as one body of Catholic believers, we all seek what is true. 

Once a wheel is round and true on the stand, however, that doesn't mean it will stay that way on the road. We will stress the spokes with baggage on our rear racks, hit potholes, and may even lay the bike down in a crash at some point. Nipples will loosen, and we will need to do periodic maintenance to bring things back in to alignment. The examen is like our spiritual truing stand, where we listen in prayer daily for the scrapes on the adjustment knobs, assess the wobbles in our rim, and make adjustments as needed with heartfelt contrition and firm resolution. The more we do this, the finer tuning our adjustments will be, and the more attuned we get to achieve spiritual roundness; i.e., perfection.

A loose spoke can always be tightened; but when we break a spoke, or pretzel a rim in a serious crash, one must seek out a shop to repair what has been damaged. This is akin to the difference between venial and mortal sin. Whereas venial sin can be forgiven by God with perfect contrition, and in the Mass, mortal sin completely severs sanctifying grace and must be accounted for in the Sacrament of Confession to repair what is irreparable. Sometimes if we are in the wild and break a spoke, we can utilize a piece of Kevlar wire or something similar to get us home until we can get to a bike shop (Perfect Contrition, with a commitment to get to Confession as soon as is possible).

When a wheel is built solid and true from the start, you can have faith that you can cover hundred if not thousands of miles reliably of rolling terrain, just as the Church is a solid foundation established on the infallibility of the Pope (it is not accident that Peter's name was Cephas, translated as 'Rock'), apostolic succession, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit who will not allow the gates of Hell to destroy her. Wheels well built do not wear out or fade away like many modern novelties, and can last in perpetuity provided you don't crash and destroy them. They propel both wealthy lawyers and poor factory workers alike. They may need a tuning, and maybe some fresh grease in the bearings after a decade or so, but that is like anything. Likewise, the Church gives us everything we need to maintain a strong and true relationship with the Lord Jesus and to avoid mortal sin, which severs the spokes that connect us to the hub of grace. 

When you are given this gift of faith, and baptized into the Church, there is nothing stopping you from setting off confidently and in perfect freedom, one pedal stroke at a time, til suddenly you find yourself having traversed cities, states, and even countries on nothing more than two wheels and the power of your legs. When you do encounter a mishap, a shop (parish) is often no farther than the town closest to you for repair. You will meet fellow travelers along the way, and will accomplish things you never sought possible by that faith and by your suffering. You will be able to do so, because the wheels which carried you there were round and true from the beginning.