Friday, March 29, 2013

Happy Birthday!

Well its my birthday and I had a fun day.  Since Good Friday is a stock market holiday, I got the day off as well, so I slept in!  Yay!!  My wife took me out for lunch at the Mediterranean Kitchen in Bellevue and OMG, it is the best!  It is one of our favorite restaurants.  They also made me dinner and dessert!  I am lucky.

I spend the afternoon working on bikes so we could go for a bike ride as it is supposed to be near 70 tomorrow in the Seattle area.  It was sunny today, so I was working outside in shorts.  I put training wheels on my daughters bike.  I got my wife's Trek down from the rafters, pumped up the tires and made sure it was ready to ride.  I checked the tires on the comfort bike, still good.  Thought I would hop on and take it for a spin around the block, but the chain would not go around!!  I look down the rear derailleur is all bent out of shape as well as the chain.  What the heck!!!  I just rode it the other day. I didn't drop it and I don't recall anything hitting it in the garage.



It is hard to see in the pictures, but obviously  it will need to be fixed or replaced.  The chain needs to be replaced for sure.  Examining the derailleur, I see why it is important to have quality parts on your bike.  I got this bike for comfort and it had been a long time since I had even thought about bikes and components.  Really I should have done my homework.  Obviously this could happen to any bike, but I have had bike bumping around my garage for years getting hit, bumped, dropped, kicked, etc.  I have never had a damaged derailleur believe it or not.  But I have always bought quality bikes and parts until now.  I may have a replacement derailleur, but it would be 20 years old, so not sure if it will cover the gear range or not.  Think I will let the shop deal with it since I have not done too much work bikes in years, but I see a new Park repair stand in my near future, hmm, someone has a birthday...

I got my old Bridgestone MB-3 mountain bike down out of the rafters.  May try that if they cannot do a quick fix on the Globe 3...  Maybe I can swap the seats, so I can have a little comfort.  I was really excited to ride tomorrow too...

Chris

1 comment:

  1. The bike is out of commission until Monday, awaiting a new derailleur and chain at Gregg's Bellevue Cycle.

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