Mechanical Mayhem Day...

Cracking day of mechanical destruction and incompetence, mostly other people's for a change - started off with William, Dave's lad, noticing that his chain felt a bit rough, it was 100% dead on a new cassette. Doh... Fitted a new chain for him before he went off to Dalby, then headed out into the Peak.

This bit involved no mechanicals, just chickens, tea and cake.

Spotted the universal symbol of distress - upturned bike with head-scratching riders at the bottom of New Allotments. Broken chain and no chain tool. Or multi-tool. Or joining link. Fixed it and gave them my spare link. Good karma, I thought.

Twenty minutes later on the Roych, upturned bike number two with rider flagging me down - 'Do you have a pump we could borrow?' Er, and the rest, an inner tube and some tyre levers. Because the spare tube had a big hole in too. More karma.

Looking back down the approach to Jacob's Ladder. A nice walk for a slow, unfit,
technically useless excuse for a mountain biker.

Last steep climb of the day. Turned left at the top of the cobbles. Keeping it smooth and, boof, snapped chain. So much for karma. Fixed it by taking out dead links and pushing pin back in and minced home very carefully.

Popped in to see Dave Next Door who's been building some Kona carbon hardtail as a race bike. The headset looked odd. The headset looked odd because for some reason, Dave had managed to fit the top bearing cover, the dome-shaped thing, in place of the crown race. On a zero stack, fat-tube headset. With a large hammer and a screwdriver.

Thank god for crown race removers. Disassembled it in the grip of a special sort of wonderment. Dave is a qualified mountain bike leader and has passed a test of his basic mechanical skills. Not sure I have much confidence in test standards any more.

On the plus side, I had some nice cake at the farm near Barber Booth. And I have vague hopes that there may be just a little good karma left over if I don't laugh too much at the headset thing. I did promise Dave I wouldn't tell anyone about that particular debacle though. No karma whatsoever I guess then... Oh well.