Week #41 2018. I am not a mechanic, or am I?

When things bicycle go well, I can cope.  When things aren’t quite right, I mostly struggle and scour YouTube for advice.  I am not a natural mechanic.

The new derailleur for the Anura arrived in a package from Greenspeed.  I fitted it and cabled up but the derailleur just would not work with the new, larger 34 tooth large cog on the freewheel.  It should but it just refused.  Trying to adjust the thing over and over only made things worse and eventually I packed it in (for that day) after finding the best I could get was to be able to  select 3 gears out of 8!  Time for a cup of tea and some thinking.

Also in the package was a 24 tooth cog for the Magnum crank.  This will replace the 30 tooth and give me some low gears for climbing hills like The Grunter.  I looked at the crank and I searched YouTube in an attempt to work out how to take the pedal / crank assembly off the Magnum.  I couldn’t find out how to remove mine.   FSA Omega cranks on YouTube are “self-extracting”, mine are not!!  Another cup of tea.  More thinking.

After several cups of tea and maybe a few beers, I worked out a few things about the Anura gearing system.  Then I visited a bike shop and bought a new inner gear cable.  Surprising myself, I managed to poke the inner cable all the way through the outer cable expecting it to get stuck at every turn.  Connecting the cable to derailleur with gear setting knowledge gained from YouTube, there we were – 7 gears accessible.  The 8th remains ungettable due to the cog being just too big.  Still 7 is much better than 3!  So the Anura is up and running and now for sale on Gumtree as a 7 speed model.

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In the meantime the weather came good, the wind died down a bit and Magnum and I checked out the usual country lanes around Longford.  There has not been much rain recently and pivot irrigators are running.  The berry industry must be going gang-busters as over the winter a number of new poly-tunnel growing systems have been installed.  Where are the berries going?  I don’t know yet but will try to find that one out.  The immediate thought is China but are berries worth enough to air freight them that far?

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Coffeeneuring.

The Coffeeneuring Season began on Friday 12th October.  On Friday I rode the River Road at Deloraine with the PoWs (People on Wheels) and we finished by heading to our regular stop at The Empire hotel for a coffee.  The owner is a cyclist and on Fridays heads out with his group for a much longer ride than the PoWs do.

The first thing I did at the Hotel was to carry 5 water glasses to our table.  One slipped and smashed.  It took a while to clear up.

That done the coffees were ready and Carole kindly took a picture of Brompton and me enjoying ours as proof.

The badge on my shirt is a Coffeeneuring patch.  By completing 6 more rides in the next 6 weeks I will qualify for this years patch.

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I really wanted to tick over the 4,000 kilometers for the year, this week.  By Sunday I was not quite there and Colin wanted to ride out to Brumbies Creek.  An ideal ride for me too, to reach the magic 4,000.

Cressy Road was quiet this Sunday morning.  At every blind summit along the road though we had cars coming up behind and overtaking.  This is Sod’s Law in practice.  After a ride through Cressy we came upon paddocks growing canola.  I had to take a picture of them as Emily has posted pictures on her website showing how poorly canola is growing in drought affected NSW.

The clouds were heavy but did not release water.  I forgot to click de-ghost when processing the above picture so Colin and the flags sort of merged together.

The winds were light and we made good progress down to Brumbies Creek.  On arrival we turned right to cycle alongside the creek until we could cycle no more.

At this point the gravel road ends and fisher people take to their feet and walk to the river.  One guy did that as we looked around.  He parked close by, walked to the water’s edge and on his first cast he got himself a very nice trout.  I will have to come out here later and see if I can land anything.

Most of the green is crack willow, a very invasive plant but one that holds the river bank together during flood.

The lure of coffee tugged and we cycled back to the Rustic Bakery in Cressy.  As we arrived there was an odd noise and I noticed a metal cylinder that seemed to have fallen from Colin’s Warrior.  It had.  It was an important component of the steering assembly that had de-welded itself.  The bars now hung lifelessly.  Luckily it detached and fell at the Cafe and not when we were running down to the creek at 30 kph plus.

After a while Jeanette appeared with the C & J Ute.  The Warrior beat a retreat back to Longford reclining in the back of the Ute while I cycled back and clicked over enough ks to complete the 4,000.  ‘Only’ 1,200 to go before year end to have averaged 100k a week for 2018.

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Total for week :    126 k                   Total for year :  4,013 k

Brompton :  26   k                  Anura :   3 k               Magnum :  97 k