The front derailer on my Kona Jake has always been cranky. Since I'm still a bike newb I tend to just leave it on the middle chainring and try to get out of the lowest gears on the casette asap to avoid drivetrain wear. Yesterday's commute home involved a muddy shoulder, though, so I had to drop it to the smallest chainring in order to keep moving. (The rear tire was digging in, and I'm already planning to replace it with something bigger and more offroad-ish when I get the money. Schwalbe is (justifiably) very proud of their tires.) So when I started this morning's commute at 4:30am (late because of my sick 4 year old) I got to battle with the front derailer until I finally got some decent pedal resistance and no grinding noises from the front end. It's my fourth day of bike commuting this week (Wednesday I had shopping and yoga, so I drove - the Jake won't hold an overfilled shopping cart full of groceries) and I was clearly a bit tired riding in - not quite as much zip trying to catch the lights and I was just a little more tired that I was biking in earlier in the week. Also, annoyingly enough, I must have gotten some mud or something on my rear derailer, because the darn thing wouldn't shift into the lowest gears - the shifter was giving me a lot more resistance than normal. I figured I'd sort things out once I got to work.
Well at about the 17 mile mark I had one of those "Hey..." moments and squinted down at my chainrings long enough to determine that I had, in fact, been using the largest chainring the entire time and hadn't noticed. I went ahead and rode the last 3 miles in that chainring just because I could.
