DPHenderson

A Monologue with the Æther

Grab bag

Nothing of particular this morning, so grab bag, since I am trying to write something every day. First, I plan to finish a project I started four years ago on the twentieth anniversary of my cross-continental bicycle trip. I was writing each day of the trip as a brief journal entry of that days bicycle ride twenty years earlier. I sidelined myself when the writing project turned into a write my own static-blogging-system project which eventually morphed into a search for an existing static-blogging-system-to-adopt-for-use project. I’ll write another day about my choice and why. I have however now that I do have a system that I like decided to resume my journaling-after-the-fact project. Look for it to resume where I left off on 28 July.

Since moving to Stockton, CA after giving up my company truck which made commuting from Merced to Stockton for my job untenable, I am commuting by bicycle. It has been so long since I have ridden on a regular basis that I am still wrestling with re-training on how to adjust the drive train properly. I recently popped a rivet on the chain to give it a thorough cleaning; then, yesterday, as I was riding, I kept experiencing odd twitches while pedaling. At first, I thought that maybe the sealed bottom bracket was going bad, but that part was moving too smoothly and any problems with it wouldn’t have been intermittent. I suspected that the problem had to be the chain especially when I started getting intermittent shift attempts uninitiated by me. In part this was caused by the cables stretching. I stopped and gave the chain a visual inspection, couldn’t find anything, but did notice that the chain was a little dry, so I added some dry lube. Kept going. Got worse. Stopped and re-inspected the chain. Noticed a link with an improperly set rivet. Break out the Ritchey multi-tool and close the rivet. Problem solved except that now the link is a little too tight. Plan to fix it this morning.

Lastly, I have some thoughts on anonymous speech that I’ll share when I have more time to write them up and more time to really let thoughts about anonymous speech percolate in my brain.