PutAwayWet
04-29-2007, 06:19 PM
I couldn't decide whether to put this thread in Shop Talk or here, but here it is.
So two years ago, I switched to SS full time leaving my geared bike as a hanging dust collector. In that time I have had more fun than two barrels of monkeys drinking wild turkey. Part of the reason I was having so much fun was that with the rigid SS, all I ever had to do was lube the chain. Seriously, in two years of riding my On-One the only maintenance I have done is change the chain and put new tires on. I thought that was fantastic...until recently.
I was a fairly decent home mechanic two years ago. I could rebuild my shocks, install headsets and bottom brackets, make any derailleuueieer (stupid weird word) shift beautifully...anyways, any work that needed to be done on my bike, I did pretty well. And then I didn't have to do it anymore.
You may have seen my post in shop talk trying to figure out which way to un-thread BB cups (which, by the way, have an arrow on them which shows the correct direction to tighten them :o ) Last night I was putting a new chain ring on - I forgot that the bolts come in different lengths and couldn't figure out why the ring wasn't secure. I stripped the head out of two 5mm allen bolts. I spent 5 minutes trying to thread a pedal into the wrong crank arm.
Is singlespeed bliss just too much for me to handle? Maybe it's true about your brain, 'If you don't use it, you'll lose it." Has my unconscious brain decided to take that once important wrenching knowledge and file it away due to disuse, storing instead mental images of my brother's bachelor party for easy access? Have I traded the complex understanding of bicycle maintenance intricacies for the constant numbing euphoria of simplicity?
More importantly, does there exist a happy medium? Can I sink into the free-floating heaven of rigid singlespeeding, yet still return home and remember how to pump up my tires? Maybe singlespeeding is like a good buzz - it needs time to wear off. I'll have to try getting all of my wrenching out of the way before I ride, because who knows when I'll sober up enough from the SS kool-aid to be able to wrench safely again.....
So two years ago, I switched to SS full time leaving my geared bike as a hanging dust collector. In that time I have had more fun than two barrels of monkeys drinking wild turkey. Part of the reason I was having so much fun was that with the rigid SS, all I ever had to do was lube the chain. Seriously, in two years of riding my On-One the only maintenance I have done is change the chain and put new tires on. I thought that was fantastic...until recently.
I was a fairly decent home mechanic two years ago. I could rebuild my shocks, install headsets and bottom brackets, make any derailleuueieer (stupid weird word) shift beautifully...anyways, any work that needed to be done on my bike, I did pretty well. And then I didn't have to do it anymore.
You may have seen my post in shop talk trying to figure out which way to un-thread BB cups (which, by the way, have an arrow on them which shows the correct direction to tighten them :o ) Last night I was putting a new chain ring on - I forgot that the bolts come in different lengths and couldn't figure out why the ring wasn't secure. I stripped the head out of two 5mm allen bolts. I spent 5 minutes trying to thread a pedal into the wrong crank arm.
Is singlespeed bliss just too much for me to handle? Maybe it's true about your brain, 'If you don't use it, you'll lose it." Has my unconscious brain decided to take that once important wrenching knowledge and file it away due to disuse, storing instead mental images of my brother's bachelor party for easy access? Have I traded the complex understanding of bicycle maintenance intricacies for the constant numbing euphoria of simplicity?
More importantly, does there exist a happy medium? Can I sink into the free-floating heaven of rigid singlespeeding, yet still return home and remember how to pump up my tires? Maybe singlespeeding is like a good buzz - it needs time to wear off. I'll have to try getting all of my wrenching out of the way before I ride, because who knows when I'll sober up enough from the SS kool-aid to be able to wrench safely again.....