Tinkering.
My parents came up for my oldest son's high school graduation (insert fuck I'm getting old here). It was nice to have them visiting, but I could tell my dad was getting bored towards the end of the trip. He mowed my lawn and started organizing my socket sets.
Not that I'm complaining, although I am embarrassed. Expensive tools were strewn around the garage and house, debris from half-finished and time-crunched projects. It's not how I like to work.
Usually, once I start a job, I like to I hammer away non-stop until it's done. That sense of completion is very important to me, and there's not a lot of that vibe in my garage. The last few years I've had to content myself with finishing small chunks, at which point I would be called away. The state of my garage reflects this.
One night last week I started working on one of my race bikes, the Trek-Livestrong Madone 6.9 SSL. The plan was to set it up as a crit bike and give it a test run on Thursday. I installed the Radio Shack-Nissan-Trek Roubaix fork and dealt with some derailleur cable issues. I installed new 52/36 chainrings on a SRM, installed a new Shimano bottom bracket, and started installing the crankset.
It didn't fit.
The bottom bracket shell on the Madone is too large, the same issue I had with the Quarq S975 on the Storck. Like the Quarq S975, this SRM was designed when most bottom brackets weren't integrated, and the electronics compartment around the spider doesn't have sufficient clearance for an oversize shell.
Calmly I screamed profanities at the top of my lungs for a half hour, wasting what little time I had available. Then I hung the mostly-finished Madone back up. The plan now is to take some measurements and see if the SRM will fit on the Storck. If it does, than the Quarq Riken will move to the Madone and all will be right in the world. If it doesn't, it gives me an excuse to buy another frame. Sometimes these things happen for a reason. Usually the reason is to piss me off.
I didn't have time to work on the new Madone frame, as much as I wanted to. It's still essentially bare, and the hour was getting late. I needed to try to get something accomplished.
I worked on wheels instead. I made headway, and my wife didn't call me away.
Call this one a win, or at least as much of a win as I'm going to get these days.
Not that I'm complaining, although I am embarrassed. Expensive tools were strewn around the garage and house, debris from half-finished and time-crunched projects. It's not how I like to work.
Usually, once I start a job, I like to I hammer away non-stop until it's done. That sense of completion is very important to me, and there's not a lot of that vibe in my garage. The last few years I've had to content myself with finishing small chunks, at which point I would be called away. The state of my garage reflects this.
One night last week I started working on one of my race bikes, the Trek-Livestrong Madone 6.9 SSL. The plan was to set it up as a crit bike and give it a test run on Thursday. I installed the Radio Shack-Nissan-Trek Roubaix fork and dealt with some derailleur cable issues. I installed new 52/36 chainrings on a SRM, installed a new Shimano bottom bracket, and started installing the crankset.
It didn't fit.
The bottom bracket shell on the Madone is too large, the same issue I had with the Quarq S975 on the Storck. Like the Quarq S975, this SRM was designed when most bottom brackets weren't integrated, and the electronics compartment around the spider doesn't have sufficient clearance for an oversize shell.
Calmly I screamed profanities at the top of my lungs for a half hour, wasting what little time I had available. Then I hung the mostly-finished Madone back up. The plan now is to take some measurements and see if the SRM will fit on the Storck. If it does, than the Quarq Riken will move to the Madone and all will be right in the world. If it doesn't, it gives me an excuse to buy another frame. Sometimes these things happen for a reason. Usually the reason is to piss me off.
I didn't have time to work on the new Madone frame, as much as I wanted to. It's still essentially bare, and the hour was getting late. I needed to try to get something accomplished.
I worked on wheels instead. I made headway, and my wife didn't call me away.
Call this one a win, or at least as much of a win as I'm going to get these days.
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