Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Broken Chain(s)

OK, so it seems my short lived ability to maintain my own bike has come to an end. Yesterday I got about 10m away from my work when the chain snapped due to my poor maintenance at the weekend. No problem though, after walking half way home and getting Rosie to pick me up, I set about fitting the new chain that had arrived in the post.

Managed to bend one of the links trying to fit that. Then this morning, it broke on the way to work. To make matters worse, the back brakes keep getting jammed as well, so this time, I'm taking it to a bike shop to get properly repaired by someone who knows what they are doing.

Labels: , ,

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Bicycle Maintenence II

Spent the day cleaning/fixing my bike. Due to a complete lack of cleaning over the winter period, the front mech was so jammed that even taking it off and scrubbing it failed to unjam it, so I had to replace the whole thing.

Replacing it was pretty straightforward, thanks to This Guide. The only problem I encountered was when I took the chain off, I pushed the pin too far and it popped out the other side, I had to remove a link to get the thing back together, but I've ordered a new chain from Merlin, so that should be sorted soon.

Front gears are now shifting cleanly and I'm back to a full complement of gears (or at least I would be, but the rear mech won't change down to the bottom gear at the moment, leaving that adjustment for another day)

Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Life - Blu Ray

I got Rosie Life on Blu-Ray for Christmas and we've just finished watching it. Some of the photography is pretty amazing and there is a lot of cool, interesting information about strange animals which inhabit our planet. I'm not usually one for too much natural history documentaries, but Life was thoroughly enjoyable.

4.5/5

Labels: , , ,