Thursday, June 28, 2012

Nature's Repair Stand

Wednesday and another test ride day. This time I decided to roll on up to Cedar Bend Park north and west of Waverly to see how the trails were. Last time I tried to check the place out the county road access to the park was being repaved, so I was thwarted in my attempt to ride that day.

As I got ready to ride I noticed the temperature was pretty hot already. Southwesterly winds were going to bring the heat even more, that much was clear. Hopefully I wouldn't wilt. Generally heat and I don't get along all that well when I am cycling.

As it turned out, I spent a fair bit of time fiddling with adjustments on the new-ish rig. Seems that derailleur hangars sometimes bend when you try bashing them with broken limbs. Who knew? So, I found an appropriate branch to use as a makeshift repair stand, applied an "equal and opposite force", and re-tuned the cable to get back to a crisp interchange of gears once more.

Then a badly behaving brake made for more fettling, although there wasn't a whole lot one can do with a hydraulic set up in the field. Meh.... I ended up eating into a big chunk of my ride time allotment with all this mechanical grubbing, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

At least I got sum skilz at mechanickin'!

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