[Bike] Twice the T tokens, twice the fun!

[dmaze]

There was this brilliant idea that we'd have an semi-organized 60ish-mile ride yesterday. "We" turned out to be only three people. But we left Davis, and headed to Mem. Drive to the BU Bridge. Where a brilliant cyclist shot out from a building and across the path, causing everyone he cut off to stop suddenly. My rear wheel wasn't on the pavement somehow, lost control, didn't unclip, left leg sad. Stopped by ET to attempt to address this, but really, I was functional, so we kept going.

More thrilling urban riding brought us to the Southwest Corridor park. Personally, I was underwhelmed, but we made it all the way to the Arborway T stop, uh, that's Forest Hills, yeah. Backtracked into JP for lunch, wandered through Franklin Park, then the Forest Hills Cemetery on the way to Mattapan Square. (Nice cemetery, incidentally; it felt much more...intimate? than the vast suburban cemeteries I've experienced before.) Rode all the way down Blue Hill Ave., into the Blue Hills Reservation, and over Chickatawbut Hill. (Always reassuring that you can climb the hills that people who passed you earlier have to walk up.) We crossed 128, headed back west...and ran into horrible tire issues and aborted to the Braintree T stop. This wound up being only 35 miles in all, but with the heat and humidity (one of those electronic-light signs that banks tend to have, though this one wasn't on a bank, said 97 degrees in JP) it was still a pretty good ride. (route)

Rant the first: HEY YOU! YEAH YOU THERE, ON THE BIKE! Get a helmet! Ride on the right side of the street! Raise your seat! Inflate your tires! Don't ride at night without lights!

Rant the second: narya and I went to Belmont Wheelworks on Friday. I wanted a new chain, since mine is 10 years old and has stretched a little; "it's time". So I asked them, "my bike says it wants a Shimano IG chain, what are my options?" And the guy went into the back and said "we have this one chain", a Shimano IG70. Okay, fine. Research on the interweb suggests that either (a) Shimano chains all suck or (b) your life is happier with an all-Shimano drivetrain. Stared at instructions for chain and chain tool, ultimately got it installed (note to self: there are four orientations for the chain, only one is correct). But this variety of chain is special because there's a special pin you're supposed to use if you ever take the chain apart, so I wanted spares just in case I had screwed it up.

So before the trip, I dropped by Ace Wheelworks to ask if they had spare chain pins for Shimano IG chains: their response: "uh...we have pins for 8/9/10-speed bikes" (no, that would be the narrower HG chain) "but in general Shimano chains all suck and we generally sell Sram chains instead." Great, um, thanks.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have indulged in your rant the first sooooooo many times.

(Also, a *ten-year-old* chain? Those in any way function?!? Admittedly, my frame of reference is odd because I go through chains in 6 months, but...but 10 years?!?)

[dmaze]

Well, the thing to remember about my bike is that I bought it in California to commute to high school. So for about six years it sat in a garage somewhere in the Bay Area. It's only in the past year or so that I've really started to do the 40+-mile rides, and I've been trying to take care of the chain. So I felt like the old chain was still in pretty reasonable shape; needed a cleaning, had stretched about 1/4" over a foot, but yeah, still quite functional.