The Story of Thursday’s Ride

[JerrySTL ★]

The story actually starts on Wednesday and ends on Friday. On Wednesday, I noticed that my chain was noisy. This made me worried.

 

So I removed the chain and put in a crockpot of melted paraffin wax. KMC Missing Links made me happy.

 

Later I pulled the chain out of the crockpot and hung it up to cool down and dry. This made me feel handy.

 

On Thursday morning I didn’t want to reinstall the chain as I was dressed for work. So I put it in a plastic bag inside the car. This made me ready for work.

 

After work I reinstalled the chain while some others were watching. This made me proud.

 

After about 100 yards I noticed that the chain was VERY noisy so I turned back to the car. I had threaded the chain through the rear derailleur incorrectly. Dumb mistake and some those watching me knew it. This made me embarrassed.

 

After starting to ride, I noticed that my water bottles were empty. This made me feel stupid. However there was a water fountain about 3 miles away. This made me feel better.

 

The first button on the water fountain didn’t work at all. The second button let out a trickle and I had to put a water bottle horizontal just to get a couple of ounces. I used one water bottle this way to fill up the other. This made me feel ingenious!

 

During the course of the ride I was stopped twice by long, slow trains. I’ve ridden this route literally thousands of times and have never been stopped by more than one train before. This made me a little morose.

 

Towards the end of the 20 mile ride I started to feel slow and sluggish even though the weather was great. This made me sad.

 

On Friday morning I found out why I was feeling slow and sluggish the evening before. The front tire was flat with a slow leak. That made me strangely happy.

[petitepedal ★]

I was slow and sluggish today...but it had nothing to do with the tire 

[Nate]

nice story

 

I liked the rhythm of the prose, very distinctive

 

I've done that with my chain before too. I was up at Rich's shop and wasn't paying attention

 

Rich says "and you call yourself a bicycle man"

 

its our joke when one of us does something stupid

[smudge ★]

I always blame sluggish on 1/2 low tire/s.  I never get lucky enough to actually HAVE one; it's always me.  

 

Good story tellin'. 

[Parr8hed]

I have done that with a chain as well.  Those jockey pulleys are tricky.