I try to keep my steeds clean and shiny - it makes me happy and they work better.
I've been seriously negleting my winter road bike though for a while now and today i got what i've had coming to me for a while. I could argue that a little bit of neglect was ok as i've only really been using it for my 15 min pedal to and from work but that would be pretty lame excuse indeed.
The back brake had been seized for months, then more recently the front had got a bit sticky too. The chain meanwhile had gradually morphed from silver to grey to odd spot of orange to total rust brown colour. At the same time, the noise down there had grown from a quiet squeek to a lumpy squarking twitter. Even a sagging chain last week failed to spurr me into action to revive things..
So, today 5 mins into my commute and running late for work, the chain decided it'd had enough and unceremoniously dragged my rear mech up round and into the cassette, beautifully bending the rear hanger at the same time. I was embarrassed enough by this state of affairs that I skulked off the side of the road and down some steps to sort things out.
20mins of faffing, cold hands and single speed botching later I think i learnt my lesson...
6 comments:
Goodwork! now leave the gears off and you will have less to worry about and need to fix.
Andy, be glad this didn't happen in London. While you were limping off round the corner, you probably would have been run down by another cyclist who would barely have taken the time to spit on you as they sprinted off to run the next red light.
so London is working out for you Anja ;-)
yikes, don't much like the sound of commuting in the big city.
Surfing larch needles on the pavement and an old lady/dog combo in the park each morning are about as hairy as things get on my commute!
Phil - i'm not nearly hard enough to ride singlespeed. Though the relative silence of my commute home sans rear derallieur was a joy.
Silence is golden, and you're tough enough to run without gears!
Chris...
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