I find as I get older, I hate being thrown off-course, whatever that course might be. So you know COVID has been doing a number on me (and us all), but we really can see something of a light at the end of the tunnel.
I think personally the situation’s been exacerbated by living overseas. Korea has been generally pretty good in handling the virus. Even now, while they lead the world in new cases, they’re bringing life back to normal for most people. They really are getting to that point where they’re living with it.
But…there’s the whole international travel thing. Part of their deal is that they’ve been fairly strict about protecting their borders. Throw in on top of that USFK’s schizophrenia — acting tough like they’re doing their part while being overly permissive on post, then being forced to overreact when they get caught. Like when some group of people on post starts posting their maskless parties on Facebook.
So these days, I take the victories as they come, hoping eventually to get back to some kind of normalcy. And I had one of those victories over the past few days.
I started when I broke a spoke on the back tire of my commuter bike a couple of months ago. Not a big deal — the bike’s got some pretty tough wheels, and I didn’t even know about it until some time after it happened. But after a couple of months with a broken spoke, a wheel will get out of true (the longer you go, the worse it gets as the rest of the spokes around the break weaken), so I decided to take it to the Giant Shop in Osan to have it taken care of…along with a couple of other things just to tune the bike up. New cables. Indexing the gears, changing the brake pads. And I had most of that done (didn’t need to change the brake pads — just tighten the cables). I took it in Friday night, picked it up on Saturday, then rode it to work Monday.
And I wasn’t happy with the result, to tell you the truth. The back tire still seemed to wobble a bit, and they used too much housing on one of the cables, causing it to interfere with the front brakes. They didn’t do a very good job indexing the gears either. A lot of chain still rubbing, and not being able to shift between the big and middle chain rings without dropping to the smallest and then going back up. The Giant Shop is usually a pretty good place, but I was disappointed. Then again, I don’t take nearly as good care of my commuter bike as I do my ride bike. The drive train was a mess, and the frame was filthy. Plus, the commuter is worth a couple thousand less than what they’re probably used to working on. They knew its value — I bought it from them. So they probably figured they knew what to do to get by. But still…
So yesterday I put it up on the rack and started to work on it myself (which, once I get off my butt, is something I actually like doing with my bikes). I pulled the rear derailleur cable and cut about 5 inches off the housing. That was pretty easy, and it did the job beautifully. Then, in the course of reindexing it, I discovered that the front derailleur was out of alignment. Fixed that. Once I got it all lined up, I took it to the car wash and gave it a good blast to knock some of the crud off the drive train. I cleaned and lubed the chain, but didn’t get to test ride it until I took it to work this morning.
And that was the moment of victory. It was as clean and quiet as it’s been in a long time (I suspect that derailleur has been out of alignment for a while). Shifted beautifully. Rode well…except the back wheel wobble. I checked it tonight and it turns out they did true the wheel, it’s just that there seems to be a slight defect in the tire. Not a big problem — I’ll probably check the tube when I get around to it.
Just happy for the little things these days…
