The side streets in my neighborhood are still exciting to ride on from yesterday's snowstorm, but the main roads are pretty clear, so I biked downtown tonight to take a wheel building workshop with Percy. It was super exciting. There was just one other student there, so it was a nice few hours of chatting while lacing wheels. Also super exciting: the bike path over Tukey's Bridge has been plowed after the last 2 storms. Even the twirly bike ramp that leads down to Marginal Way. What an improvement over last Winter!
It was at the very end of the lesson that we started talking about getting a feel for spoke tension and I said that Percy reminded me of a harpist as he felt the spokes. He said that some wheel builders pluck the spokes to hear whether they're all the same tightness. Coooooool. I can't wait to try this (though the next wheel I will be building is for the Brompton, and those spokes are so short and thick I don't even know if they'll sound like anything).
Counting spoke noises, the current tally of Musical Apartment Noises is:
- doorbell in descending minor third
- gas boiler, when starting up, hums at a B just below middle C for about 10 seconds, then becomes a major second, adding a C#. Then it dies off.
- teakettle: major second: C and D, both an octave above middle C
- two ticking clocks, not ticking together, and not ticking in the same rhythm all the time, telling me that their respective batteries are dying at different rates. One is in the violin lesson room and is really distracting when the metronome is on, clicking at a different speed. May have to remove it.
- fluorescent lights in kitchen: B just below middle C, which should be in tune with the gas boiler, if it were possible to hear the gas boiler from the kitchen.
What next, I wonder? Will pluck spokes to find out...