Almost another four-crossing day

I rode to work on the Vanguard today. I stopped at the corporate office to pick up some supplies I had ordered, as I couldn't haul the whole lot yesterday.

Shortly after I got to my office in N'Awb'ny, I got a call from my supervisor, informing me that I was to be at the main office at 9:30 for a training session. Mindful of some conversations in the recent past about my attire that I don't wish to drag out here, I asked if it would be best for me to bring a change of clothes, since I was on two wheels rather than four. I was told that, yes, a change of clothes would be in order.

I had tweaked my back a bit recently, exacerbating some pain that had been developing simply as a function of being relatively sedentary in my job. I've been walking around like an old fogey the last few days. I've started doing my exercises again, and they are helping, but it takes time to recover just as it takes time to get worse.

With that in mind, the Maintenance Tech who works for me insisted that I borrow his car for the round trip to the main office. I opted to accept his offer, as it would prevent me having to change clothes twice and give me more time on either end of the meeting to do things in my own office.

I keep advising folks to have a chain tool and a chain-appropriate length of repair links in the tool bag, but I need to learn to follow my own advice. I had a chain break while on my way home tonight, and it was shortly after the nearest two bike shops were probably closed for the evening. Jenn was close to another shop that was open, so she was good enough to get a link for me and bring it to me. By the time she got to me, I had the chain rethreaded in the bike and ready to simply connect with the new link.

It got me to thinking about how long that chain has been on that bike. It's past time for new chain and cassette, so I've ordered replacements and will mount them this weekend. I don't remember what the mileage was at the time, but the current chain has been on the bike since early 2001, and likely has eight thousand miles on it. There were a couple years in there that the bike didn't get a ton of use, as most of my club miles were on the Bacchetta and I was only a mile from work, which counter the thousand or three miles I've put on the bike in the last year.

I guess if I kept detailed records on this sort of thing, I could make definitive statements rather than generalizations. Part of it is that when I was working on bikes all the time, I wanted to ride my bike rather than work on it. I often let little maintenance stuff slide on my own bikes, just because I didn't feel like spending time working on ANY bike at the moment. I can usually deal with little stuff as I ride.

However, I will have a chain tool in the tool bag on both bikes from now on (I have one, but it is aboard the other bike). I have spare links at home, and will now have some on the bike as well.