Dropping back out of Blacksmith Fork Canyon I got a huge draft as a convoy of semi trucks passed. As they broke the wind the smell of breaking wind encouraged me to drop off that draft as fast as possible. I felt the experience and appropriate metaphor for a ride that started out rather crappy. Today was my second ride out in the real world and as I mounted the saddle I remembered that my front derailleur had refused to do it’s job on my one previous ride. I’ve learned much from YouTube over the years and a six minute video of a charming British mechanic with beautiful English seemed sufficient instruction to turn me into a derailleur tuning pro. I quickly learned that his first step, turning the inner limit screw to push the derailleur to the outside would be different than what should have been my first step, excise the demons from the damn thing. In a record breaking six minutes his drive train hummed a beautiful tune. An hour later I was still using expletives to interrogate the hunk of metal, springs and cables attached to my bicycle. Finally, I managed to get maintain it’s former behavior of not shifting into the large ring which was better than the behavior from most of the hour where it flung the chain off the rings like a professional baseball player.
The ride – Paradise
The bike – Time VRS Fluidity