Cycling is like life. Cycling with no goal is meaningless. What meaning is there cycling in circles? Or living aimlessly? Meaning comes from direction and destination. Join me in my life's journey on a mountain bike :)

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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Fiddling or fixing?

Woodlands, 56 km. My front derailleur shifter has been spongy and I've wanted to change it. Still, that would mean downtime and money. As I cycle, I fiddle with the barrel adjuster. Performance markedly improves. Which reminds me of a photo of an old couple and its caption: we come from a generation where if something is broken we fix it instead of throwing it away.

The adjustment came about as, after changing the bottom bracket, the chain ground against metal when I shift gears. The front derailleur hasn't shifted, perhaps the new spacers for the bottom bracket are thicker than the slimmed-by-age old spacers, and changed the chain alignment. Fixing one problem (the chain) might have solved another problem (spongy shifter).

So, I've saved money, time and a wee bit of the Earth. I wonder if the repair will last. Wouldn't that be nice: instead of one problem leading to another, one solution led to another.

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