Myf and I went down to the basement storage area and put my bike together. Much to my annoyance, considering that I had paid the Giant bike shop to take my frame apart for me, I discovered that not only had they not oiled the seized up bit of metal that allows me to theoretically take my frame apart with just a single hex key, they'd also managed to do a kick-ass job of scratching up the paint when they were moving it for disassembly. We ended up using my multi-tool as a hammer to get the piece back in place.

Zaiming had an alumni lunch or something like that so he bugged out while Myf and I were still performing morning caffeine rituals. Once fully caffeinated, the two of us were off to find breakfast and a specific bike shop that Myf knew would be able to do a good job at the sort of tweaking that's always necessary after dis- and re-assembly and which I'm still rather hamhanded at doing.

Although Natooke is specifically a fixie focused shop, they still knew how to handle things like brakes and shifters. They also noticed that my newly rebuilt rear wheel was already out of true. I'm not sure exactly what Sam did wrong (I have a few guesses) but whatever it was he did, everything was screwed up and the twenty or thirty kilometers that I'd done luggageless had been enough to start to deform the new rim as well.

They spent all afternoon rebuilding my wheel. Unlaced it. Relaced it. Unlaced it and changed all the spoke nipples. Unlaced it, measured the spokes, did calculations, and relaced it with a different set of spokes. Decided their calculations were wrong, unlaced it again and relaced it with a third set of spokes. I remember saying to Myf at some point that it was a really good thing that I'd fought my online banking's refusal to work properly on my phone the night before as this was going to get very very expensive.

Only it didn't get very very expensive. It didn't even get expensive. When we got told the price (some four hours after they'd started messing with my bike) the look of shock on both our faces was sufficient to have the mechanic ask if he was charging too much. He very definitely wasn't charging too much. If anything, even by China standards, he was charging too little.

By the time we left the bike shop, it was dinner time. Harrison and Liz were going to take the place that Zaiming had been sleeping in but, as the two of them are both vegans and big on not using any substances like alcohol (or even, in Harrison's case, caffeine) Myf and I ate dinner at the original Arrow Factory Taphouse without them before joining them and two of Harrison's local hip hop friends to wander the hutongs near the Drum Tower and find a place to sit and hangout.

Then, as it was getting late, and the two of them were still jetlagged we got sharebikes for them and went back to Myf's mom's old apartment.