Broken chain link

My £60 Trek Antelope wasn't much loved by its previous owner, so I've learnt to replace gear cables which have snapped within the shifters housing, know what it feels like when a crank arm is about to fall off and cleaned a lot of gunk off the cogs which look suspiciously cracked and worn.

No surprises then when the chain gave in earlier this month, though it was only one side of a link, which was somewhat of a blessing as it took a couple of days of commuting with my pedal-stroke feeling a bit 'weird' before I had a closer look and saw the link sticking out like a broken arm.

Fast forward to mid-November and with a handy Protools CT-5 chaintool purchased and a Sunday morning spare, we attempted a repair job, with this video serving as encouragement that the task ahead would be a piece of cake.

In reality the old pins really didn't want to budge but with a bit of brute force (Justin) and encouragement (me) we pulled off the broken bits of chain and reattached the slightly shorter chain, even having time to read the instructions for our new tool which showed how to loosen the chain links after reattaching.

Clever eh, and we didn't even leave grease on the living room floor.

9500 k

If I could easily take a a photo of the inside of the sewer system, it would be here.

I'm not one hundred percent sure that's where my bicycle computer ended up, but the romantic in me thinks that clattering off the road and into a gutter grating is a good way to go, even if the clock was only 500 kilometres from clocking over.

Last Friday evening, when this micro tragedy struck, I'd been pondering the distance on my way home – just five weeks of commuting until the clock ticked over, less if we managed some weekend rides into November. I wondered how far you'd get if you travelled 10,000 k in a straight line? Could I have cycled to Russia?

The computer will have filtered through the waste water system and has probably been fished out with leaves and rubbish and empty cola cans by some mechanical arm.

As for the 1000k photo project, I'm not sure if I should try my luck with another Cateye Strada 8 and reset it to 9500 (which frankly feels like cheating), start again with something new, or give up the idea all together? I'm going to have to think this one through.

A map named Asia

We're the proud new owners of a map named Asia. Its a thing of beauty, and its not just its size ( it's length is just shorter than the width of our double bed) or the bright colours; or the twin expanses of Russia and China through the middle. No, the brilliant piece of art, which had me idling in bookstores with the weight of it in my hand trying to justify the spend, this map stretches East from Ireland past England all the way to the tip of Australia. Yes it covers Asia, but the clever mapmaking boffins who designed it don't let Asia sit in isolation.


The reason this is so exciting is not just because of my fetish for cartography. Next year we hope to be lucky enough to be travelling some of that by bicycle and while we've been plotting things we want to see on our trip on googlemaps sometimes the big picture is worth looking at as well.

Even if its just to remind ourselves how big things are.

Swimming at Dancing Ledge

Take two of camping at Tom's Field Campsite over last month's August Bank Holiday weekend. This time we knew what we were looking for when we followed signs to the Dancing Ledge, but the day before it had been raining and on Monday morning it was still overcast so we doubted that we would want to swim.

We scrambled down a cliff fron to reach this pool which had been blasted out of the ledge and by then I had made my mind up that it was one of those once only opportunities, so jumped in.