Spirituality: Truing

I am standing in front of a contraption that looks like a vise got mixed up with a bunch of threaded shafts and knobs, then grew arms. In my hand is a triangle-shaped little block of nickel-plated steel marked “Park Tool SW-7,” short for “spoke wrench seven.” A nipple and spoke at a time, I’m releasing the tension from a bicycle wheel.

This one came off a 1993 Burley Duet tandem. Back then, the thinking was that a tandem wheel needed to be super-strong, so rather than a typical wheel’s 32 or 36 spokes, it has 48. I fit the wrench to a nipple, give it a half-turn counterclockwise. Rotate the wheel 1.7 inches to the next spoke and nipple. Do it again. I’ll be unscrewing for a while.

Releasing tension sounds good, doesn’t it? We get massages, we learn to meditate, we stop by happy hour to unwind. It sounds like something that ought to be part of preventative maintenance, a kindness the careful do for their bicycles every six months or thousand miles.

But I am destroying this wheel. (Only so the hub may be laced into a new one, but never mind that.)

Often the naive — no insult intended — assume spokes push out against a rim. But that would mean the weight of the bicycle (20 pounds, if it’s a very light one), accessories (grams add up), water (a pint’s a pound the whole world ‘round), rider (your mileage may vary), and the rider’s lunch all bear down on those little steel sticks, trying to push back. How can they take the load without folding into a tangle? They can’t. They don’t.

Spokes can’t push against forces like that. Instead, they pull. A spoked wheel depends upon stress to be strong. The rim is pulled so it can’t deform under the weight. It’s like yanking a clothesline tight, tighter, really tight. Then you can hang all the clothes on it you want, while it barely sags. The tension keeps it straight. It’s the same with a spoked wheel: the tension keeps it round.

Thus, the careful do adjust the spoke tension on their wheels every few months or so many miles. But we tighten as much or more than we loosen, and we measure progress against how straight and round the wheel is. The process has a name that sounds like an augury. It’s called “truing.”

You and I are the same as a spoked wheel: A balanced amount of tension makes us strong. Bearable stresses call forth our personal truth. It stretches the maker to create. It stretches the partner to relate. It stretches the steward to tend. It stretches the caregiver to care. But this is what we’re made for.

So to our own selves, let us be trued. Let’s lean into the pull. And then, there are miles to go before we sleep. Let’s roll.

The wind in your face. Your wheels tracking a straight line. It’s good. It’s very good.

The Reverend Doug Job does interim ministry for congregations in transition and keeps good memories and friends made while serving a church in Cape. Presently, his bicycle shop is in a historic church's former coal room in Hannibal, Mo. He may be reached at revdarkwater@gmail.com