Sometimes running one red light will lead to a beautiful string of green lights. Sometimes waiting for the light to turn green will lead to an amazing streak of red lights. The timing on the lights changes depending on the hour. In the morning, bombing down Pike Street then under the convention center, Union is a nice clean ride all the way to 2nd. In the afternoon you’ll hit reds at every Avenue. Sometimes it makes no sense at all
Sometimes one little tweak of your bike leads to a long and painful maintenance session. At 7:15am on Friday I decided to take a little slack out of my rear brake cable because the pads are toast but I knew I could get a few more days out of them. Then I noticed the housing was too short. The piece of housing I put on weeks ago was hitting the cable hanger in the back and preventing the cantilevers from working properly. So I starting digging around for a new, longer piece of housing and all I could find was a big piece of white Campy housing. I would rather ride another bike to work than ride a bike with one scrap of white cable housing, so I dug deeper and found a scrap of black. The longer housing made the brake cable almost too short to use. But because I had no new cables sitting around, it would have to do. Then I noticed the pads really were toast, the chain tension was dangerously loose for a single speed, and my tire was in bad shape. I ended up messing with my bike for 45 minutes that morning before work.
This is a lesson I’ve learned before but it took that little session to remind myself. Don’t tweak your bike in the morning. I don’t mind bike repair and maintenance on my own bikes, as long as it’s not being done under pressure with the clock ticking. Unless that clock is the company clock, as in “on the clock” as in, I’m getting paid. I’m a big fan of pushing the envelope. Making it until Friday. Going one more day. Stretching the life of a bike component to unseen limits.
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