The old bike

Adam Merberg — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:37:03 +0000

When I left home for the office riding my old bike on Thursday morning, I immediately realized that the seat was too low for me. This was the bike that I used all of last semester, and I didn’t adjust the seat after I stopped using it, so it occurred to me that I must have ridden it with the seat too low all of last semester. On Thursday, I was in enough of a hurry that I didn’t want to stop to adjust the seat height, so I left it the way it was. If I could ride the bike that way for a whole semester, I could do it for another day. It wasn’t easy, though. I huffed and puffed my way up hills that I had easily climbed on the new bike. On Friday, I raised the seat a few inches, which made things noticeably easier, but I still found that I had to keep the bike in the lower gears.

When I returned home from the office this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my new hanger had arrived already. Within a couple of minutes, I had installed it on the new bike. I took a test ride down the street, and the derailleur seems to be working smoothly. The brakes could use a quick adjustment, but I’m looking forward to taking it for my commute tomorrow.

The bike

Adam Merberg — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:47:09 +0000

Monday morning as I was running to catch a bus to class, it occurred to me that I might be better off biking at a leisurely pace than chasing after buses. After buying a new helmet last night, I left home this morning on my bike about twenty minutes before class started. This allowed me plenty of time to get to campus even though I was leaving close to twenty minutes later than I would have to catch the bus.

Things didn’t go quite as planned. As soon as I shifted gears, I started hearing the chain rubbing against something. The sound seemed to be coming from the rear, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell much. I stopped a few times along the way, but the noise persisted, except at the highest gears. Fortunately, I was still able to get into class almost on time.

I had previously given the bike a cursory inspection and concluded that it hadn’t been damaged in the accident, but this morning, I noticed that, in fact, the derailleur was badly scratched. The scratches, I reasoned, wouldn’t be likely to affect the functionality, but if the derailleur scraped against the ground, something could easily have bent and caused the chain to come in contact with something it wasn’t supposed to. A quick look in a bike maintenance guide suggested that it was probably the hanger that was bent.

I ordered a new hanger after some unsuccessful attempts to bend the hanger back into shape. Until it arrives, I’ll be using my secondary bike or taking the buses.

Shock and Jaw » repairs

The old bike

The bike