Tony Finch – blog

The chain on my Brompton broke on the way into work as I was moving onto a roundabout in the wrong gear. Fortunately there wasn’t too much traffic, and I had a spare plastic bag in which I could carry the filthy remnant. I decided to take the B to the bike shop on Botolph Lane near the office in order to minimise additional lateness, but the place turned out to be closed. Bah. So I trekked down to Drake’s (the most-local-but-still-too-far-away B dealer) to get them to fix the chain, move the brake cable (that they routed incorrectly) into the right place, and attend to some minor niggles.

I had a dumb chain incident a few weeks back where I managed to knock it off the front chainwheel and couldn’t work out how to get it back on. (The B has lots of narrow gaps for things to get stuck in.) So I split the chain, but I stuffed it up when putting it back together, leaving a link rather stiff. It seemed OK after some competent TLC from the Botolph Lane shop, but I suppose I must have done it more damage than I thought.

I knew there was a good reason I never do anything non-trivial with it.

Anyway, I got into work an additional hour late, and since then I have achieved very little. Sigh. Maybe I’ll have some inclination for SpamAssassination when I’ve cut off a few more of the usenet hydra’s heads.