Back on the chain gang

The Robin Hood in repair dock. I had to move him
to the back of the garage while I track down a new nut.

I'm all out of transportation but personal locomotion. I own three bikes and none is rideable today. After months of procrastination I finally tore into my Trek 830 mountain bike to do some long-overdue maintenance. Besides replacing the original shift and brake cables on the 16-year-old veteran, I was intent on replacing the crankset (the front sprockets and pedal cranks. 

So the Trek is in pieces in the basement, one part broken and another stuck beyond my muscle. No worries, though, I thought. Robin Hood is still rolling along as he has all winter. But Sunday evening as I rode to church for a special jazz vespers service to benefit the Jack Larson Shoe Project, the chain slipped off the sprockets. Now, I saw this coming, or should have. I noticed how slack it was a couple weeks ago. But, like the dolt who figures as long as the car is running, all you need to worry about is the gas tank, I decided it was doing just fine in that state and let it be.

D'Oh!

Well, not to worry. A 42-year-old chain loaded with grime just needs a good cleaning and a little readjustment of the rear wheel to set it back in motion. Alas, as with any mechanical project I undertake, this simple task was frought with obstacles. In removing the belligerent chain, I managed to break my new chain-breaker. Well, it might still work, but a piece broke off it. Fortunately I have another. The chain was wretched. Even after a 20-minute soak in degreaser and a furious scrubbing, at least a couple links seemed to bind.

Time for a new chain! Off I ran to Wal-Mart. Yeah, I kinda hate Walmart (I still want to spell it the old way, hyphen, uppercase M, but the company has adopted the one-word style). My year and a half boycott of Wally World, which has been broken but thrice, was based on their insistance that I check my backpack at customer service while I perused the store. Prejudice against bicyclists, I declared! Women carry bigger purses and smuggle stolen goodies under their babies, so why offend the poor cyclist over a backpack? But I digress. Sorry. Point is, I ran to Walmart for a chain (only place in town that carries them) and home again -- 4 miles! -- so I killed two birds with one stone.

Then it turns out the chain is too short. WTF!? Just my luck. The package specifies it is for 1- or 3-speed bikes. Mine is a 3-speed. Well, I figure the best course of action now is to attack the original chain again with more gusto and try to loosen those sticky links. That accomplished -- sort of -- I reassemble the chain (thankfully I have a spare master link, because the original was lost somewhere, sometime during the cleaning process. Is this for real?).

The offending nut.

I am home free. The drivetrain is pretty darned clean and, in some spots, shining. I pull the chain taut, wrench the chain-side axle nut tight and move to the opposite side to straighten the wheel and finish. The nut snugs down, but then spins over and over with each successive turn of the wrench. Something's stripped. God, grant me patience.

I determine it's the nut and head off to Dad's to look for a replacement, having found nothing in my supply of odds and ends. Dad has a few possible fits (later I realize they're not) and also a tap and die set. In addition to snagging a few possible replacements, I attempt to re-thread the nut with the tap. No luck. So, the tools are stored and a return trip to Dad's is planned to get the thread gauge to identify the right size nut for my next trip to Menards or Lowe's.

And friends wonder why I fear and fret over bicycle maintenance. I really do enjoy it, or at least I would like to enjoy it and do when it goes as planned. But such travails are frustrating beyond words.

Oh well, at least I got in my run.

Today's Stats
Temp: 37 degrees F
Distance: 4 miles
Treasure: 1 1/2-inch combination wrench; 1 rubber gas cap; 1 homemade CD titled "Throwback"; 1 black knit glove with skeletal print; 1 gas- and oil-soaked shop rag; 1 ballpoint pen; 30 cans.

iPod Playlist (shuffle)
Tell Her About It - Billy Joel
Nobody Home - Pink Floyd
I Can't Let You Go - Matchbox Twenty
Breathe (2AM) - Anna Nalick
Faith - Ryan McCullough
Splendid Isolation - Warren Zevon
Mr. Roboto - Styx
Expecting - The Call
Caring is Creepy - The Shins
Drink (Acoustic) - Fiction Plane
New Way to Fly - Garth Brooks
No Such Thing (Live) - John Mayer