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cycling below zero

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I rode my bike to work today. Well, not exactly "my", but I'm "my-ing" it.

the bike in question

You see, my friend and recent business partner Jon bought this bike many years ago, and when he left for Tokyo (a decade ago) he left it with a common friend of ours. I wrote to that friend earlier in the month to ask his expert opinion on where I could get myself a good used bike. He told me to come to his place and pick up Jon's old bike.

Great! Only the problems with Jon's bike as it was were apparent immediately. First, the thing had a set of flat handlebars way down where the stem emerges from the frame. I'd cycled only about fifteen minutes before ducking into a bike repair shop to get the new stem that you see in the pic above. Also, the front brake cable was so frayed that the brake made sounds instead of stopping the bike. The new stem is great, but the fellow who did the work left the thing with a sketchy make-shift brake-cable holder that wobbles around every time I pull the brake. Mildly concerning....

Then I had to add the anchor for Kenny's child seat. The anchor came with me from Tokyo, and by some miracle fit the seat post quite well. The only problem was that I couldn't keep the cable for the front derailleur on the bike. Which wasn't in itself a big problem because a) I don't use that gear shifter (I had not had it installed on my bike in Tokyo) and b) it wasn't working on Jon's bike in any case. But once the cable was off I had to mess about with the front derailleur quite a bit to get it back inline with the front's middle gear.

So that's where I now stand. With one cheap repair shop hack and one homemade hack.

I hope I get to work okay the next time I ride....