Earlier today, I was assembling my daughter’s new Rollator. It was all going fine, I had the wheels on, assembled the backrest and the seat, and it all looked fine. Just the brake on one side was a wee bit tight. So I thought I’d just sort that out.
So I tried adjusting them. But instead of just tightening up the cable, I went and tightened up the nut on the part that holds the cable in place (which I later discovered was the brake cable anchor bolt). And then… bang. The bolt snapped at the hole that the cable goes into, the spring on the brake shot off. And I knew I’d done something really wrong.
There ought to be a word for the instant that you know you have made a mistake like this, whether over-tightening a screw and cracking what it holds, or stripping the thread from a critical screw, or losing a leg from an integrated circuit: the moment that something goes seriously wrong with what should have been a simple job. And you know that it was entirely your own fault.
I was lucky: I tried first one bicycle repair shop, who gave me a bolt the right size (but I’d have needed to drill a hole through it – not easy) then a large bicycle shop who couldn’t help, then a mobility shop who didn’t have that particular spare, then another bicycle shop who sent me to Recyke-a-bike Stirling (https://www.recyke-a-bike.co.uk) . And they had just the right thing, They didn’t even charge me for it.
So, I managed to fix the mess I’d made, and get the Rollator fully assembled and working, and I even got the brakes right. But I’m now looking for just the right word. Nor just a burach, but a burach entirely of one’s own making,
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