• 1:55 PM
  On a fixie this means "no braaaaaakes"

Another beautiful and sunny day here in Seatt... er..

I mean, woe is us! Such awful and inclement weather we are subjected to on a near daily basis, if not even more often! It is such a burden to exist here.. in Seattle. I sure bet everyone in Los Angeles would be very happy staying where they are and not moving up here and buying an entire island for the same price as one of their closet-sized condos.

Ahem, so that's the little anti-anti-seattle backlash story. Seattle has a reputation for being rainy. Empirical evidence seems to suggest it is no more rainy than any other city at a similiar latitude. To solve the cognitive dissonance, someone or other has come up with the idea that this is a myth perpetuated by Seattle residents in order to discourage more people from moving here (especially people from California, who may be astounded by the relatively low land prices and can purchase huge amounts of it with the proceeds from sales of their teeny tiny lots in socal.) (Like my dad's late little brother Gordon apparently did.)

Anyhow it was another very nice day here and I rode my bike to work, as I like to do as often as I can. I did lots of work, blah blah blah, and then turned around and started pedalling home.

Going up the very first and very steep hill on my route home, my chain started chattering as if I had not shifted completely between gears. In response I eased up on the pedals to try and slack the chain and shifted down one gear, to align the derailleur with the shift index. still clattering. Fine, I shifted to the smallest chainring in front. Still chattering! Then I lost the chain off the inside of the front chainring. Sigh.

I'm able to re-ring the chain by shifting up all the way, putting on the front brake and doing a "nose wheelie" with one foot on the ground, and rotating the pedals a rev or two. This worked, and I was back in gear. I carefully started pedalling and I lost the chain again! Completely, this time.

Chain would be a great desk toy if it wasn't all greasy.
Or waxy, in my case, since I use a wax lube
(doesn't leave black marks on your leg)

So that was another trip home on foot, pushing the bike. I've done it like 3 times now, the previous two times due to flat tires. THIS time I was carrying a full complement of patches, tools, and extra tubes even. But the chain breaker attached to my multi-tool does not work with the extra-thin shimano hyperglide 9 speed chains that have been on every one of my bikes. And I wasn't carrying any extra pins anyway. Well.. I could just go get another pin and chain tool. Or get one of those SRAM "powerlink" chains. Enh. I'm not so gear nuts about chains.