• Calling out Billman & Why The Bicycle Exchange in Carrollton Texas Rocks!

  Filed under Coolness
  Jul 26

  No photo today, that’ll come tomorrow. But, I finally got my new crank in from Nashbar. Low and behold, it was too big and I needed a new spindle and new chain to use the thing. Either I send it back and wait another week to get the part, or I find a bike shop in town and get a new spindle. (The spindle is the thing that the crank arms attach to.)

  I guess one was supposed to have mind reading powers as there was nothing in the description about what kind of spindle this new crank needed. In fact, the description didn’t even have the tooth count of the chainring. But Hey, maybe this was the reason the thing was on sale. “No biggie,” I thought,”This is good because I’ll have to learn how to fix my bike.”

  Problem: I didn’t have the tool to get the old spindle out, and it appeared like I might have to hammer the thing out. *sigh*

  So I found a place in town called the Bicycle Exchange, and they were SO NICE! I told them that I really wanted to learn how to do this, and didn’t want them to do all the work for me. “No problem,” they said and allowed me into the shop to see what they were doing and to work on part of it myself. They removed the old spindle (involving only a tool that looked like a special socket) and showed me how to fix the rest. They empowered me, and I will take my bicycle business to them FOREVER for that.

  Tomorrow: I will show pictures of my bicycle with its new airhorn, golf balls, chain and chainring.

  Now, for the second part of my post today. Billman. Bill is an old friend of mine from back at K-State. We met when I was doing an internship little travel newspaper in Manhattan, KS. We were both struggling students, but he had a wife and family to support, and I just had to make enough to eat. A bit later down the line, I tutored him in algebra to get some extra money on the side.

  Bill was the first one to re-introduce me to writing. He was a part of a writers group mailing list and he invited me to be a part of it. It was one of the few things in college I really looked forward to. Some of the writing was good, some of it was bad, some of it really sucked, but we all helped each other out. I can honestly say, this was the first time that I really understood the power of the web.

  Other times, Bill and I would meet in the little hippy dippy coffee shop down in Aggieville on Tuesday nights to listen to people read poetry. Mind you, this was before drinking coffee was really hip and before Starbucks was on every corner.

  Now, to frame this, you need to know a little about Bill. He was in the military as a policeman from the 70’s to 2002 and has the size that most people are intimidated just by looking at him. He looks so Italian that he’d fit right in on the cast of the Sopranos and, he often wears a Colt 45 belt buckle with matching ball cap. (Or, he did at the time.) To see this hulking, Italian, mobster-esque looking man stand up and read poetry about ‘Flowers on a Spring Day’ or “An Ode to the Lump of Something I found in my Fridge” in a hippy dippy coffee shop was just hysterical. He loved to write about things and make them funny and then read them to us in a deadpan voice. Some of the things he wrote were so funny, we’d all have tears running down our faces at the end of it.

  My college years were very difficult for me, but one of the shining moments I do remember was hanging out with Bill. And, I’m so glad he and I have gotten back into contact.

  Bill has told me that he, too, misses writing and wants to get back into it, and he’s trying to do it by writing comments on my blog. (For which I’m grateful.) But I think he can do better than that.

  So, today, I make a challenge to you, Bill. I challenge you to put up your own blog and start writing. One post a day for 30 days. You long to write. You know you do. And the thing is, it doesn’t have to be especially good. Just do it to bring back that little bit of joy in your life.

  You can get a free blog on wordpress.com, and there are a few templates you can use to personalize it. Then, all you need to do is login and write. (Hey, it even has spell check…CTRL-Click will get you a menu of the right spelling.)

  I think about how the synchronicity in my life has been working to bring me back to writing, and I almost wonder why I didn’t come back to it sooner. Right as I’ve decided to really work to get back into writing, I find my old friend who used to encourage me to do it. It is sort of like a part of the universe is telling me ‘YES…this is the path…’ so I will continue to write, for this blog and others, as well as some fun fiction stories that I’ve had in my mind for a while.

  And, while I think it’d be cool to be a best selling author one day, I’ll be happy even if I’m not, simply because I love to do it.

  And maybe that’s what really matters. In the words of Randy Pausch,”If it’s not fun, why do it?”

  2 Comments

2 Responses to “Calling out Billman & Why The Bicycle Exchange in Carrollton Texas Rocks!”

1. 

   BillMan said on July 26th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

   So yer a-callin’ me out, are ya Missy?? Well, just you watch out, li’l lady, ya might just git what yer a-askin’ fer!!

2. 

   BillMan said on July 26th, 2008 at 10:12 pm

   http://gladdad.wordpress.com/

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