Roadside Mechanical

Today was one of "those" mornings. I didn't sleep well last night and left the house later than I should have. I realized that my commuter bike had a flat tire and my floor pump was at work. Add to that the fact that I couldn't find either of my mini-pumps (Where do these things go?... Oh, yeah. My sons pretend like they are guns and shoot one another with air. They're probably in a toy box somewhere.) So I was forced to take the Xtracycle that's been giving me a little guff inside that snazzy internally geared hub. Yes, it's that hub that supposedly gives no guff. Yet the guff had me on the side of the road several times today.

The fine tuning on these things is pretty annoying. Any little bit of cable movement causes it to come out of tune. It's got no wiggle room. And putting it on a long bike means there's lots of cable to relocate itself. And since you can't see the gears, you have to play with the barrel adjuster, ride for a bit and then play with it some more. A quarter turn of the barrel adjuster too much will throw it off. Then your pedals spin out of control and you're left with no gears at all. It takes a lot more love than a simple drivetrain system. But once it's set up, it should stay that way... in theory.

I'm happy to say that I think I got it all finished. And my boyscoutedness had me loaded with zip ties to keep those cables in place. So I think everything is going to stay put for a while. So I finished the job after stopping three times and was a bit fuming. But it didn't take long to cool off.

My final stop had me starting the ride back up next to a field of wildflowers. It was quite a nice view that you can't see from the road that I would take if I were going to work in a car.

And, oh... I forgot this pic from yesterday.

There was a dead groundhog in the middle of the MTB trail yesterday morning. Is that trail-kill? The MTB equivalent to road-kill? It has to be, right? Animals just don't die in midstride walking across a path, do they? So someone hit it with their bike? Anyway, whoever killed it just left it there. That's Jason using a stick to give it a proper burial (or at least giving it the honor of not being run over time and time again). I thought you guys would appreciate me sharing that.

I digress.

I made it to work only five minutes later than normal. So all is well and my mood has settled. Now for coffee.

Get out there.