April 14 2021

Folks,

How's it curdling?

I rode my bike in to work this morning

Worked another glorious Water Treatment Plant day shift

Then rode home again

I made it most of the way too, when the rear derailleur fell off

This caused the bike's chain to wrap itself around the crankset and twist a few links well out of shape

So I had to walk the bike the rest of the way home

^{_{Oh well}}

...

I thought a locking nut holding the derailleur to the frame had worked its way loose and fell off

Which would suck because, good luck finding that needle in the proverbial haystack

Once home, on closer inspection, turns out I was wrong in the best way

No locking nut, but a locking bolt instead

It had worked it's way out of a threaded hole in the frame, but was captive within the derailleur assembly

Great design for a mountain bike subject to a lot of vibration!

Frustration-minimisation

So once I removed the mangled chain, I could reattach the derailleur using an Allen key

^_Awesome!

Next problem to solve was the chain

I used a chainbreaker tool to remove the warped links which left me fifteen links short

I have a new chain for when the current one wears out, but it's not quite there yet

So, I took a length of fifteen links from an old spare chain, which was also not quite worn out, and started attaching the two together

I then went to close it up on the bike, and was literally pressing the very last pin into place when the chainbreaker tool broke

^{_{You've got to be fucking kidding me}}

Some days, you just can't catch a damn break