[bike] Harvard Fruitlands card

nuclearpolymer has the full set of "Beyond the Minuteman" laminated route cards, and proposed doing the longest of those this week, a 56-mile route from Bedford up to Harvard. narya had a houseguest so I couldn't take the car all day to start in Bedford, but biking home to Bedford to Harvard to Bedford, and then getting a ride home, seemed like a plan (68 miles vs. last week's 63). In the end we would up taking the short route from Concord to Bedford (Carlisle is so blah these days), knocking a couple miles off the card route, and I had enough energy to bike home (started to lose steam past Arlington, but I made it in the end).

Vital stats: 75.80 miles, bringing my bike up to 517.8. Bike computer claims just over 6 hours in motion, but I left home at 7:45 and got home around 5:15, so three and a half hours stopped (!), for moving and total averages of 12.6 mph and 8.0 mph, respectively. Route map

This was a pretty nice ride, for largely keeping to back roads. There's a nice view of the Fitchburg/Shirley/Wachussett area from northern Harvard the ride took us through. Harvard is, in fact, Big Thigh Country, but it's also quite pretty. There was one really substantial climb after we left the Still River area, but once we did that we joined up with the Climb to the Clouds route for the nice downhill bits. But if hills bother you at all (the route card said "some rolling hills, some not-so-rolling hills") this might not be the ride for you. I did okay with them, though I did wind up needing to stop on the really big climb a couple of times.

(And after all that I was still able to maintain 12-13 mph on my own on the "uphill" part of the Minuteman coming back into Lexington, which was a good sign.)

[bike] Odd failure yesterday

Oh right, yesterday's ride had more than its share of bike failures. We lost a tire in outer Carlisle, and the tandem's rear chain needed to be reseated several miles later.

Ever since I've had it, the new bike's front derailleur has acted a little funny. It feels like the shifter has four positions, but there are only three chainrings, and getting it to act consistently takes a little effort. Somewhere in outer Acton, the shifting started to get really bad, and then the chain fell off the inner chainring. In the process of reseating it, I discovered that the entire pedal assembly shifted about a half inch side-to-side, which explained the current exceptional badness. On further examination, it seemed like the left-side crank was half an inch too far out, which is odd because repairing it required first moving the crank inwards and then screwing in a piece on the outside.

Question the first: is this something that could Just Happen? Or is it a possible problem when the bike was initially put together that I just haven't noticed, or something Wheelworks might have touched in the "30-day checkup" (a good 100 miles before this)?

Question the second: the screws that hold the crank on had strange blue stuff on them, and several of the parts around there have specific torques printed on them. Should I take the bike somewhere to have the crank taken off and put on again, or is what I'm able to accomplish with hand tools in my backpack good enough?