Today I, made some food for Christmas dinner. My dad was impressed.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net...83615305_n.jpg

Got a used set of Shimano SPDs for free. Happy Xmas!

Today I spent most of the day with my family. Came home and swapped some bullhorns onto my Draft beater bike. Remembered how much I ****ing hate adjusting brakes. Made me realize I'd never want to work at a bike shop for this very reason.

Today my parents threw a Christmas party with some old friends and I kicked it back with some beer and watched M:I 1 & 3, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Green Lantern.

Just need the right tools. Get a 4th hand.

easy adjustment:

1. leave a small amount of adjustment room in the barrel adjuster
2.release cable from clamp
3.hold both sides of caliper against the rim, by hand or by other means
4. pull the cable taut and tighten the clamp
5. turn the barrel adjuster to open the brake as preferred

the cable doesn't need to be real tight when you clamp it, just remove the slack while you have the caliper squeezed. 4th hand tool is great for other kinds of brakes, not really needed for road calipers

Why is it called a 4th hand? Shouldn't it be a 3rd hand?

it gets called both. I just call it cable puller thing-of-a-ma-jig

The third hand tool holds the brake pads to the rim. 4th hand tool pulls cable taught while you tighten anchor bolt.

great for cantilevers

3rd hand tool

http://imagehost.vendio.com/bin/imag...er_tool_01.jpg

4th hand tool

http://www.parktool.com/uploads/thum...d6_430x390.jpg

I've never really found an actual need to use either one, even with cantis.

To be fair Scrod, you do have four hands.

I find cantis impossible to adjust, even with a 6th hand tool. :o

I generally don't have a problem with it either, except on really old, worn-out brake levers. It's a nice-to-have tool.

Newer cantis are pretty easy to adjust, imo. I have the stock set on my Raleigh from the 80s, huge pain in the ass.

IDK, I have two MTBs with cantis from the early 1990s and I can't adjust them no matter how hard I try. They are both Shimano Deore XT, and have those wonky one-sided bridge cable setups where the brake cable passes through a Y-connector and on to one of the canti calipers. Dumbest design ever.

Have you considered using a traditional yoke instead?

Precisely what adjustment problem are you having? By the time those one-sided dealies came out, seems like Shimano's cantis had the adjustment screw on one arm which made centering pretty easy.

It seems like I'll get them adjusted and then after a few applications of the brake they get out again and aren't centered. Moving the pivot bolt up or down also biases the cable tension, so it's a never ending combination of adjustments. Anyways, the brakes work poorly, regardless, and I'd love to just figure a way to put front disk brakes on them. Both front rims are uneven and braking is uneven and weak, plus they squeal like stuck pigs.

Today I made so much food for a potluck that the host asked me to leave some at home. Oops. Dinner tomorrow is taken care of though...

filled up on blood sausage from the local Polish butcher, getting changed and hitting the rollers, then shower and disco nap until we meet friends at the pub.

Today I spent a lot of time on my new rollers. Still a little shakey but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Made a sw8 edit for kicks :P (not claiming to have any competence with video editing)

I want to get rollers so bad for those rainy days that I can't ride (or maybe I just refuse to). Have any recommendations on which ones I should take a look at?

The Nashbar and Performance Bike reduced radius rollers both get rave reviews and are very similar. Both cost around $150 shipped. The biggest difference is the performance bike ones can be folded for storage.