journal features

new chain, new cassette

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2015.06.24

After barely eight months, I'm already on my second chain and cassette. I stopped at Velotique to talk to the owner about the fact that my chain was already skipping and my chain stretch tool was tut-tutting. He wasn't impressed with my strategy of swapping out the cassette, shifter, and derailleur to convert it to a seven speed, and once I realized that the derailleur would have to go, I wasn't impressed either.

He did caution me to get a chain cleaner and some better lube, and to do this thing called "taking care of my bike".

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton