Adjusted my rear derailleur last night, per SRAM's manual. I was careful, honest.

Chain skipped this morning, everything I did made it worse, and it finally came off and jammed both wheels.

Got it back on, couldn't figure out how to undo the bad adjustments, chain was skipping all over the place. I am now back home with my kids. Preschool is cancelled and I have grease everywhere.

Apparently rear derailleurs are next on the list of things to learn more about.

noteon: Check out Park Tools. They have how-to guides for doing almost everything you can think of for your bike.

Streets were quiet this morning. Almost like a holiday weekend. Weird.

Nice and cool ... good change after the +30 of a few days ago.

Summer winding up?

Thanks. I chose the SRAM Dual Drive manual over that because, well... it's a SRAM Dual Drive. Silly me.

I took it to the LBS. They said there was something going on inside the Dual Drive clickbox, but since the mechanic doesn't speak English and the owner's translator skills are less than optimal, I don't know any more than that. But after they did whatever they did to the clickbox, all it needed was an adjustment to the low limit screw, and it seems fine now.

And I still don't know exactly what was wrong. One of the down sides to living in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood...

I keep seeing the same guy commuting the other way every morning. Looks like a poor guy, raggedy clothes, commuting on some generic freestyle bike. I get the impression that he bikes because that's the only mode of transportation he can afford.

So I hesitate to tell the guy to start riding on the correct side of the road. He's always on the sidewalk going against traffic. I doubt he's cycling for fun if he doesn't know that basic rule...Oh well. What can you do.

Ojala que this might help: http://sheldonbrown.com/es-eng.html

Nice ride in this morning, no rain for the first time in a couple days.

Hmm... it doesn't have an entry for "The doofus thinks he's a mechanic."

Which they were too polite to say while I was there.

But we were all thinking it.

Just over in Chelsea. The weather has been miserable; it hasn't rained for about 6 weeks. Finally we got some this evening, but we could use that every day for a week. I've been having to water a lot of plants and the gardens daily for weeks now.

If it'll actually RAIN I'd take the overcast every day, and happily ride in the rain.

Been busy, so haven't posted much. Nice uneventful rides, for the most part.

Except for Thursday, when I was riding home, minding my own business, and suddenly one of the cranks fell off. In the middle of an intersection. Didn't crash, and did manage to get myself over to the side of the road & call my husband to come get me and run me + bike over to the LBS. They fixed it with some locktite and all seems to be fine.

Except that the nice friendly creaking noise that I had gotten so accustomed to seems to be gone. :o

This isn't quite a commuting story but I'll tell it anyway.
I try to do a quick mile jaunt on my lunch break in order to get in some exercise. Well, I'm coming back to work from that when I see a woman walking ahead of me. A guy is following her across the street and all of a sudden closes the gap on her and smacks her in the head (ah love, Pueblo style). The guy then walks a bit up the street away from her then starts following her when she starts going down another street. Just so much that you see from a bicycle if you actually take notice.

A note of caution, apparently the police have been given a hand out for the DNC which states, among other things, that cyclists may be potential protesters, :(

Had a fantastic commute over to the roller derby arena yesterday. 12 mile trip, nobody tried to run me over or honk at me, weather was good and the bike was running in tip top condition. Life is good on a bike

That does seem odd for sure hmm. Whatever floats the boat I guess.

As far as the commute today, well it went well until I took the first wrong turn and never did quite recover after that, ended up just riding home. Not to say I will not do it again, I will just call today my Pre Ride of the Route, so that next time I know which way to go and get there in record time. Half Full Of Course :)

Today's rides were by car, tomorrow's will be too.
I sprained my neck over my weekend. I stretched wrong, pulled something, and had muscle spasms bad enough to win me a neck collar (do not like) and some Flexeril (HATE). Hopefully I'll be riding again on Tuesday.

I did report this incident, but I guess both of them had left by the time they got around to it and they were just out of camera range. i guess the moral is keep your head up and look around every once in a while (that's something I have a problem with). What you see could amaze you (in both good and bad ways).

People exercising their rights? Acting like Americans should? They must be stopped!

I added Ergon grips to Little Red over the weekend, and now getting her to fold properly is a pain. The grips are very comfy though.

Yesterdays ride was very nice the temps have cooled down some over the last week. Only once car passed me on the way home. Some overcast and I thought I was going to get rained on, but made it home dry and safe. We will see what happen today as it looks like rain and I do not know if I want to take the kid out in the rain for the commute to work today. [ Yep my son rides in the Chariot to work with me, wife and I work in the same school ;) ]

The commute was great. It's thunderstorm conditions here, so I used it as an opportunity to finish configuring and checking out a bike I'm putting together for rain (a 1989 or so Peugeot Iseran). I've procrastinated finishing the work on it, but now that it's raining regularly again I put it on the road. The ride in told me that the rear derailleur and rear brakes need some fine tuning, and that I've forgotten how to use bar end shifters effectively. But other than those things it was a nice (though damp) commute in.

Back to commuting after a three week hiatus due to a bad case of cellulitis that kept me in the hospital for a week. Leg's getting back to normal. Lungs feel good. Guy I bombed past took umbrage and after about a half mile where he went into the drops, passed me again. Homeless guy on the bench now has a bike parked there to ease his commute.

Day #1 DNC commute.
Nothing was blocked off this morning and everything went fine. However, my ride home is going to be via an all street route that detours around downtown. meh!
This is going to make me enjoy my ride through commerce city for the first time.

was a nice ride this morning. not too cool, not too warm. But I was late, so I had no time to stop and smell the rosies. Had to hammer it the whole way.

strong headwind this morning for about 10 miles. Haven't had that for the AM commute for a while. Usually hits me hard on the way home though. Maybe it'll stick around and I'll end up with a tailwind later...:thumb:

It was a cool ride in, very quick. Traffic was at an ebb.

The commute was pretty great. 5 miles to and from an off-site training location and then 6.5 to my office.

The weather is perfect right now at low 80s and sunny with a light breeze, but the weather peoples are calling for rain/storms in the area this afternoon.

Met up with one other cyclist this morning and had a nice chat on the ride and saw quite a few pedestrians on the MUP.

It's a good day in Jacksonville, NC (and we don't get to say that often-enough. :) ).

Tough commute today. Strong headwind. 3 hrs sleep. No energy or desire. But I buried my head and just kept going. found a little shortcut that took 2 miles off of my 15 miles one way. Still arrived in an hour even with the wind and hitting every freaking light. My average speed was only a tad lower than normal. I really made ground when I was in the cross wind instead of the headwind.

Nice ride in this morning. I left later than usual and it was still pretty dark. That seemed to happen all at once.

I've been riding my Trek 800 since the accident. It used to be my everything bike. I used to like it a lot but now it is definatly not my favorite. I'm still assessing the damage to the Marin and dreading buying parts