Wrenching, Not Riding

Gonna be a really short post today, kinda bummed and a little pissed off at the same time. only the fault of myself and no-one else but that does not help make it any better.

I took the day of for the reason of relaxing and spending time with the family as well as starting the day out early with a nice long bike ride to somewhere, anywhere so long as it's far away and I would be out on the road riding. It never happened, no matter how early I get up, no matter how much I prepare it seems that lately there is always "something" that gets in the friggin' way.

Wrenching

So I planned to leave the house by 9:00 AM no matter what, that was my deadline so I would have a goal to shoot for and something to keep me on track. Even so, it did not work and fell on it's face completely from the start.

I went out to make a couple adjustments to the bike that I knew I would have to make before heading out. Adjusting the seat angle and height and then a couple tweaks to the drive system because it has been acting up a little bit the past couple rides.

Long, long, long story short - I had a hell of a time getting the dam derailleur's to be positioned as they need to be. Then if I would get them setup as they should be, something else would be fucked up and not correct. Fix that adjustment and you guessed it, the last thing was now out of alignment.

I looked all over the web, I checked my repair manual that I had bought a while back and nothing would get me close. I should explain, I am no dumb-ass when it comes to working on mechanical items, motors, engines, wood heck pretty much anything with my hands. I was not having any luck and had started this "quick little set of adjustments" at around 2:30, so I was already way behind schedule getting my ass out of the house and on the road. Keep in mind I was up at 7:00 AM.

Around 5:30 PM I gave up, I had tried about every combination I could think of with the order of the adjustments and no dice. Went inside to get a bottle of water "probably should have went ahead and grabbed a beer had I known" and decided to do a couple more searches on YouTube. Well what do you know, I found this guy that had a TON of videos that are all related to exactly what I needed to know and they are very well done, detailed and professional.

So to wrap it up before calling it good enough and done it took me around 4 hours +/- to do little to nothing but screw up my bike so it was not ride-able, well it was - I am being a little dramatic, but it was not 100% up to my persona safety expectations and I would have been taking a huge risk going for a ride that was 40, 80, 100 miles long. After watching the videos that the guy put up I went back outside in the garage and was able to adjust the entire drive-train perfectly, it feels even better now that when I picked the thing up at the bike shop, it's smoother and everything.

Even though the real test will be when I go out and take it for a ride, as it sits now I think its a job well done and even though I regret wasting the entire day off I did learn a LOT about the set-up of the chain, front and rear derailleurs and cables. Something that will help me in the future should I need to make adjustments, repairs or upgrades on the road or in the comfort of my garage.

The crappy part is that I spent an entire day off doing nothing that I wanted to be doing. Oh and if you were curious as to what happened to the time between when I woke up until when I started messing with the bike? I wont even get into that because it's even more annoying - it's more crap about the Garmin Edge 1000 and what a piece of shxt it is in my opinion at the moment.

WiFi on it is a fucking joke and never works. You try to run the software it comes with and it then asks you for it and proceeds to try to install in etc etc - again not getting into it. I am seriously considering going with the Magellan once again as well. It will suck because I am a little embedded in Garmin technology but the majority of it does not work or if and when it does its not reliable or a battery hog. OK, done - it's been a long day and I am tired of thinking of how I wasted it for the most part. Tomorrow is a new day - looking forward to it.

Photo: Received my gecko that I helped to crowd fund. Can't wait to mess with it soon and see how it turned out. I can't imagine all the work it takes to get from idea to package in someones hand.