Darned slippery rail.

Remember that sliding rail I bought a couple weeks ago?... Wow, I didn't realize it was already that long....

Well, after all the trouble that stupid thing caused me in Shanghai, I kind of figured it had gotten out all its bad juju and it would leave me alone. But, of course, the story of the sliding bearing did not end in Shanghai.

The carriage, the green rectangle thing, just slides up and down the rail.
How hard is it to find something like that?

I guess it's my fault really, after all, what kind of idiot was I to try and buy a second one?

The piece is for a kind of gadget I've been trying to build properly for years, a gadget that is attached to the wearer's wrists. And since most people have two wrists, I wanted to make two of this kind of gadget. Also, having extra parts is always helpful on experimental builds.

So, knowing about a local string of hardware stores that were probably planned by the guy behind Water Bottle Street, I set out to find a shop like the one I discovered in Shanghai.

The first shop I visited had no idea what it was. They didn't even know where I could go to find out what it was. So I asked the next shop in line. Their ignorance was as complete as turkey with gravy. The next shop had as many clues as elephants. After that, I asked the next shop, which sold power tools. At first, I was hesitant to even investigate here; they probably didn't stock anything but the most basic components, and they certainly wouldn't have something like this.

And I was right about both things. But the lady behind the desk was helpful regardless.

She knew were I could continue my search. It was a little tricky understanding the directions she gave me, so I gave her my notebook and she sketched and labeled an intersection where I could find a potential vendor. This was the best information I had gotten all day, and I was quite thankful, but I could hardly distinguish any of the characters  she had written. She assured me that a taxi would understand the diagram, so I took her word and picture and set out.

I couldn't even figure out how to look these words up in the dictionary
so I could tell the cabby.

Miraculously, this fortune was followed by a second; the cabby easily understood the pictogram without any input from me.

Rewind to the previous Friday for a second, to another time I was in a taxi, on my way to a tutoring job. We passed a string of stores that looked like they sold hardware and tools. As anyone who knows me would expect, I took notice of this and planned to visit the place after the tutoring appointment next week.

Turns out I was back sooner than I thought; that street was a block from where the cabby dropped me off.

I went into the store, noticing the many bearings stacked along their shelves, and asked them if they had the kind that I needed.

Nope.

Did they know where I could find them?

Somewhere in that direction.

Great.

Once again I started walking into stores asking them if they sold the kind of thing I was holding. The specific sentence I kept repeating was "你知道我在哪儿可以买这样东西？" (Do you know where I can find this kind of thing?) Which was the correct question that never seemed to yield the correct answer.

After about four shops I hit an appliance mall, so I doubled back and tried the stores on the other side of the first one. Pretty soon, I found a more professional looking space that had actual desks and clean tile where other shops had overfull shelves and dirty wood floors. This time, they seemed to recognize the bearing, but they didn't have it in stock.

No matter, they did have a catalog! After they took a few measurements and scrutinized the rail, they told me that it wasn't branded. Huh, no surprise there, I hadn't exactly paid for a quality guaranteed Mouser system. Regardless, they seemed to have found it in the catalog based on its measurements, but they would have to order it.

I wasn't really interested in that. I didn't want to wait around for it, for what could be weeks, and pay for shipping, and I was sure that one of these places must have it, or something close enough, already in stock. I thanked the ladies for looking it up, and asked them if any other shop would have it.

Of course there weren't any other shops that sold it, their's was the only shop in this entire area, which I would later discover was bigger than the lot where the Frederick Towne Mall resided, that could order this component for me.

I instantly recognized how ridiculous this whopper was, and though I recognized the reason for it, I still couldn't believe they dropped it on me. It was sort of like going to a restaurant in Frederick, a generally Coke-Cola town, and being told that they were the only place for a mile around that served Pepsi and that it would cost twice what a Coke did.

I already wasn't keen on ordering the part, and after learning this shop would be my "only" chance, I excused myself .

I was fairly disheartened at this point; including the shops before the taxi ride, I had hit over a dozen places, 90% of them said something like “没见了" (I've never seen this before) and only one of them even knew how to get what I needed. Even though there was another string of unexplored shops across the street by this time I was about to give up the chase. Perhaps the only option really was catalog ordering. And I was already tired. And the sun was so bright.

Pff, I wouldn't give up that easily.

Turns out, the shops those ladies were talking about when they said that no one sold what I wanted only included the shops on their side of the street. Less than ten minutes after walking out their door, I had found a guy who sold linear bearing carriages almost identical to the ones I already had. (The carriage is the part that slides about on the rail.) 

Unfortunately, the man didn't have any rails the size I needed, but he could order them from, what else, a catalog!

And that is when a very interesting thing happened for a second time. Some readers may remember when I was questing for solder and a new phone, and just as I asked where I could buy solder the guy's wife came out of nowhere to give me a price on their own solder, earning them a sale. This time, just after I learned that he was going to get it shipped form a catalog and I was about to end the sale, his wife spoke up to say the perfect thing.

She said that delivery would take three or four days.

Those other ladies never mentioned a time, and I had assumed it would take at least two weeks based on previous, albeit small, experience with Chinese shipping. And the price was good, the guy seemed trustworthy, and assured me the rail would fit the extra carriage I had. Also, I had realized a couple of other things since I walked away form that other shop with their extremely exclusive catalog, like, maybe I happened to by a part that generally wasn't stocked. And, even if I paid extra, I would probably never find this component at this price in America. And, I would probably just end up catalog ordering this thing in America anyway.

After getting the price, ever cautious of dumb decisions after getting my phone, I told the guy I would pay him half now, and then the rest when I got the piece. (Honest question for readers, is this an appropriate thing to do?)

He understood, and told me it would be in around Saturday. He also showed me the shop next to his where I could buy hardware to mount the components I had, and had just ordered.

At this point, I had gotten what I was looking for, and some hardware to boot. But a bag of screws and washers didn't seem very conclusive, even if a rail was on the way. Hmm... Perhaps I could also get a spring for this thing. Shouldn't be too hard, I just needed something a couple inches long.

Man, that was a terrible idea. That place seemed to be completely out, and by 'place' I don't mean shop. Or shops. Or even that market. Absolutely no one had extension springs. I spent easily an hour wandering up and down the street. And an oddly creepy indoor market(?) with a remarkable number of empty stalls. And a 'village' that contained enough hydraulics to build a robotic T-rex.

And that was the weird thing. Every third shop sold hydraulics, on the street, in the village and the market. How could this city possibly need so many? I know they're important for factories, but those were miles away and I would imagine they order their own parts directly.

It was a proper water bottle street conundrum. And the confusing aspect was multiplied by the fact that they didn't even have any other types of springs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think those two would go hand in hand; in all the How It's Made videos I've seen, machines with linear and rotational motion always need springs. Except, apparently, for whatever these shops were supplying.

Finally, I concluded my search. I think I had tripled my 'visited stores' tally, and had nothing to show for it save a very strong impression that this place sold hydraulics.

After peeking my head into the dozenth  store full of pistons and pumps, I got a taxi to the one of the many malls in the area, marking a shift in focus from the mechanical to the nutritional. Lunchtime had already passed as I considered how many robot dinosaurs a particular shop could equip, and my wandering had left me famished.

I felt better after eating, but not good enough to continue looking for the spring, so I got some cheap electronic accessories and concluded my day there.

I guess it wasn't totally fruitless, but it was frustrating.

It is kind of interesting though. The rail I bought is designed to keep things moving in a linear fashion. And yet, it was only when I deviated from my linear thinking did I get anywhere. Why would I go looking for a linear bearing in a power tool shop? I'm not sure why I thought what I needed was across the street minutes after being told no one in the city sold it. And I couldn't have gotten what I wanted if I stayed determined to avoid catalogs. 

But what thought should I have departed from to get that darn spring?

Perhaps to get that, I should have been inelastic, unyielding in my drive to find it.

Since all this happened, which was on Tuesday, a bit more of the story has developed. My order came in, exactly when the guy said it would, and the new rail is exactly what I wanted, so ordering from him turned out to be a great idea. Also, I found the spring I needed, and it was nowhere near that district; it came out of a stapler. I'm not sure what kind of reflection that has on what I said above about ways of thinking, but it's sort of moot anyway now that I have what I need.