Life in the Bus Lane

I appear to be 34 now.

With the same kit on as the Stiffee apart from the seatpost, saddle, and bottom bracket, the 456 weighs in at a generous 32lbs. Rather more than I was expecting to be honest.

• Spend ten minutes moving a fleet of bikes out into the garden to make some space to work in, avoiding the pile of cat vomit along the way
• Pop broken bike into the workstand, remove broken chainset and remove the bottom bracket ready for later
• Pop old bike into the work stand
• Unbolt the rear brake, trying not to drop the caliper spacers.
• Pick up as many of the dropped spacers as you can find.
• Start to remove the rear wheel then panic when this unbalances everything and the workstand falls over.
• Stand on the back of the workstand and stretch across and try and carefully remove the front wheel. Drop it and the watch wheel bounce out though the back door.
• Retrieve the front wheel from half-way down the garden
• Remove stem, then drop the forks out with the aid of a big hammer.
• More hammering time, get the headset remover out and start whacking.
• Retrieve the dropped headset cups and scrape the mud off. At least you hope it’s mud
• Spend ten minutes trying to find the workshop chain tool, then give up and try and find the rucksack and play "guess the pocket" to find the spare one before removing the chain.
• Cut the gear cables and remove the front and rear mechs, then remove the chainset.
• Find somewhere safe to put the old frame, the kitchen seems a safe bet.
• Grease the new seatpost clamp and seatpost and fit to the new frame, then put the frame in the workstand.
• Stand back and admire your new toy.
• Grease the headtube and press the new cups in, look slighly confused when part of the headset press gets stuck in the cups, end up randomly hitting things until they fall out again.
• Refit the forks and stem whilst trying not to tip the workstand over again.
• Frantically search for extra headset spacers, realise you’ve used them all so cannibalise another bike.
• Refit the forks with enough spacers this time.
• Refit rear brake caliper and ziptie the hose to the guides on the top tube because you’re too lazy to get the bits to do it properly.
• Fit the "universal" front mech hoping that you’ve got all the spacers in the right place.
• Grease and fit the pimpy XTR rear mech.
• Grease and fit ISIS BB, it probably won’t be in there long though.
• Fit cranks, then spend five minutes trying to work out why the crank bolts don’t fit before remembering that you’ve used a different bottom bracket.
• Finally finish fitting the cranks with the correct bolts.
• Refit the chain.
• Try and remember how to replace the cables in SRAM Attack shifters. Poke and prod things, find a likely looking bit of plastic, unscrew it and drop it under the washing machine. Replace the cable. Repeat for the other shifter except this time drop the bit of plastic under the tumble drier.
• Cut full length outers to about 110% of the required length, poke the ends with a pin to open them up again. Fix cables to the mech in the appropriate manner, this takes a bit of trial and error with the strange front mech.
• Try shifting, realised you haven’t tightened the cables enough, so start again.
• By some miracle the rear shifting is almost perfect, just a quick nudge to the high limit screw.
• Fettle the screws on the new front mech to stop it trying to shift onto the outer chainring which isn’t there.
• Realise the front mech is stuck so hit it a few times, attack it with GT85 then hit it again. That seems to fix it
• Pop the saddle on and drop the bike off the stand.
• Realise the saddle is at a funny angle, try and adjust it and fail, look confused, wander across and look at the cross bike, then realise you’ve fitted the in-line seatpost the wrong way around.
• Take the head of the seatpost apart, drop several bolts, faff a bit more, then eventually get the saddle back on in something approximating the right angle.
• Realise that you need to align the rear brake caliper properly, sort the saddle height and angle out, and protect the chainstay, but you haven’t got time.
• Eat a quick tea and go babysitting
• Worry about the rest tomorrow

Can you tell that I’m a bit bored at the moment?

In almost world record time I stripped down the Stiffee and transplanted all the parts onto the 456. The gears seem to index properly, the rear brake needs reshimming, and a test ride will have to wait as I’ve run out of time. Pictures to follow when the weather improves.

It’s here!

Time to see how much of it I can get built before I have to go babysitting.

I’m currently sat waiting for the courier to arrive with my new frame. I could go and strip the old bike down first, but that would probably mean that I won’t hear the doorbell, and would therefore miss the delivery making it a rather futile exercise.

I bet it arrives about 5pm which will be too late for me to get it built today.

The joys of reusing tracking numbers.

Collected: 13/12/2006
Arrived at Hub: 26/08/2005 00:35:45
Arrived at Delivery Depot: BATH Depot at 26/08/2005 05:24:28
With Delivery Driver: 26/08/2005 06:45:24

Either that or Amtrak have invented time travel and will be delivering my frame 16 months ago.

I’ve just had a very pleasant evening in town. We went for a quick pint in one pub, then ended up decamping to another one for proper beer and got tempted by the pie and mash and stayed for some food. I had a Ho Ho Pie (venison) and mash with Guinness and red onion gravy, washed down with a pint of Old Peculiar.

When I got home I found an email with the dispatch details for my new frame, so that should be with me tomorrow, and hopefully built up ready for a ride on Friday.

No tracking details, so presumably no frame tomorrow.

My TNF Nuptse jacket is on it’s way as well courtesy of Millets 25% discount at the weekend. I’ve been after one for a few years but had never been able to justify the fairly exorbitant price until the sale effectively knocked £40 off making it merely "bloody expensive".