The company you keep

Cods wallop.
I should have listened to my parents.
They were always harping about being careful who you hangout with.
You never know what sort of negative influences you will be subjected to.
Thats the problem with hanging out with people like Butch.
You get a little taste of the good stuff and all of the sudden you are in a realm of italian depravity that you never knew existed.
I left my jacket behind last week, and Butch lent me his Castelli Fusione.
Holy nuts.
I don't get up in a hot fuss about clothing much, but that was one of the most comfortable pieces of apparel I have ever donned.
I like it so much that tomorrow I am going to walk into a bike shop and (gasp) pay retail for one.
Given the mild winter we are in the midst of, I am not hedging my bets on buying any skis this year.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks I am going to be doing some shilling. You might notice, that I don't advertise or even really promote sponsors on this blog. Its not that I am not grateful for the support I receive, but that in my mind is business. My blog is personal, and is not something that I put a dollar value on. Brands and products get promoted because people see them being utilized. I utilize the crap out of my stuff everyday.
That being said, I don't have any money and daddy needs a new bike. I promise I will not get all dicky on you, and fill this with daily drivel about straps and a bobble head doll that dictates the nature of my bowel movements.......or whatever sort of ascendancy Mike Piazza has over the wee one.
My goal for this next year is to have a 10,000 mile year, which, granted, is pretty ambitious given the short nature of MN's unfrozen state. Brace yourself.

The Aftermath

The perceived fallout from getting back from a fortnight away from home and not cleaning my bike upon returning home, manifested itself in the form of a Jockey wheel that crapped its pants after the great hog wrestling that was Jinglecross......man....that was a hell of a sentence......channeling Hunter S. Thompson.
I have had to deal with a lot of jockey wheels recently

Above: on the Left are SRAM X-9 Jockey wheels. The furtherset left one I managed to partially crush while riding off a skinny. To the right of it is the X9 pulley (filched off the tandem), only to learn that they changed the design the next model year (shaking fist at the sky). I ended up going to Buchois's (french for Butch) local bike shop to get what I needed. The two pulleys on the right are off of my SRAM Rival Derailleur, but the rightmost was completely seized. There was mud in between the metal caps and the bearing seals and the bearings were pretty well packed with mud.

I cleaned the bearing out as best I could, then blew it out with WD-40. It cleaned up really well, but the bearing was still completely siezed. The bearing brackets and what I could see or the races did not appear to be especially corroded,


After a little thinking and pricing replacement parts I said, "screw it" and clamped the center of the bearing with vice grips and used a chain whip to break it loose. after I forced it free I hit it with a few blasts of WD-40 and then hit it with some compressed air to dry it out. By now it was spinning very freely, so I repacked it with waterproof grease, snapped in the clean seals and put it back together. I should also add that I that taken the whole bike apart for its yearly deep cleaning. I also repacked the external BB bearing that I salvaged last year. I have found that I if I can keep grease in it it remains functional. I just get sick of having to cough up at least 40 bucks every time a bearing craps out.

Togetherness

Just Jill did some family pictures for us when we were back home. She was incredibly patient and got some great pictures. If you are in East TN or Western NC you should consider her for your Family portrait needs.