Into every life must come a certain amount of confusion, and a bit of irritation, garnished with some frustration. That’s not to say we dwell in those places. But it happens. Some time ago I featured the latest project, a Surly Traveler’s Check. If you follow this blog, you might have noticed that, after that announcement, we were strangely silent about the whole thing. There were reasons for that.
A lot of stuff happened. This stuff took up a lot of time. At the same time, I ran into what Robert Pirsig refers to as a “gumption trap.”
Those of you who have not read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will need a bit of prompting. (Please note, I strongly recommend this book!)
First off, what is “gumption”?
-noun Informal
1. initiative; aggressiveness; resourcefulness
2. courage; spunk; guts
So “gumption” could be seen as the inner fortitude and resourcefulness to see a task through to successful completion.
How many of you have had a scenario like this? You begin a job or task. You know what you wish to accomplish. Things are going fairly well. And then it happens. Some glitch, or unforeseen problem arises. Possibly you solve the problem, but another one arises. You find a fix for that. Then another glitch occurs. At this point you are getting tired, and you realize that the solution to this latest problem is to back up, undo a lot of work, and re-do it. The temptation is to quit and go away.
That is a gumption trap. It’s a situation that robs you of your gumption, drains away your stick-to-it-iveness.
That is pretty much what happened to me. In order to get the Surly up and running, I needed to build a rear wheel around the magic SRAM Torpedo ™ hub. I ordered a rim, calculated the spoke lengths needed, got spokes, and went to work. I prepped the spokes and laced the wheel up. So far so good. But when it came to tensioning and truing the thing… Well, that was when I discovered that I’d miscalculated the spoke lengths. They were all about three millimeters too long.
And there was all this other stuff happening in my life. That’s a perfect recipe for a gumption trap.
Yes, I make mistakes. The problem of spoke length is a nontrivial one. More, I work with this stuff all day long, so I have a bit less inclination to do so on my own time. That’s when I want to ride a bike!
Of course, I’m a lot slower on my own projects. The time I spend working on my bikes is very limited, and it competes with so many other demands. Nothing unusual there. We all have many demands on our time. It’s a constant juggling act.
So, I let the project sit. Don’t tell me none of you have ever done anything similar. We all fall into this from time to time.
So now I’m on a schedule.
This week: Get that wheel built!
Next week: Driveline
Week after: Final assembly and test
Watch this space for more news soon.
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