moving swiftly along

The beast is back! In what was, for this weekend, a rare and fleeting moment of motivation, I retrieved my bikes from under the house and got them back on the road. The Avanti-eBay-special-commuter continues to show it's age and after a successful gear change will grumble and skip a gear before settling down again. But it goes and despite the canti brakes and against all odds it stops. Not sure I trust the gears enough to use it as a comuter again just yet. I still have painful memories of slipping gears and cut knees and have a low-level fear of standing on the pedals.

The Santa Cruz, on the other hand, is back with a bang. The rear wheel had been locking up when I used the back brake, the fearsome Magura. I'd repositioned the wheel a number of times and a number of times it had locked back up under braking and then not released. It seems that my problem here was onme of being a bit of a pussy and the solution was easy. Rather than adjust the wheel with care and delicacy, as I would for a v-brake, what was needed was the quick release to be dialled in firm, set with gritted teeth and a "now just fucking stay there" attitude.

And that worked. Pedal and brake; wheel still spinning. Jump a few kerbs; still spinning. Down a few sets of steps and still spinning, down a rutted rocky track and still no lock up. Cool. The beast is back, and now I need to get back my bike legs, muscularly distinct to the running legs that seem to be working rather well at the moment.