Waving the White Flag

(Please Amy. Use your laser eyes to fix my bike.)



(Old derailleur. It had a cracked pulley wheel. I had been waiting for it to fail.)

Alright I give up. I surrender. I've had enough. All the tool buying, the reading about repairs, the hours and hours of pointless labor ... I'm done. I just want to ride my bike again.

All I wanted to do was replace my cassette and my chain. Here is a list of things now wrong with my bike (some problems I've introduced since trying to repair it myself):

- Rear wheel is not spinning true (in all fairness this is the shops fault, not mine)
- Rear derailleur is not set up correctly (I bought a new one)
- Shift indicators are broken (I have no idea what gear I'm in now. This was my fault)
- Screws on shifting housing are loose/threads are jacked up (Again, this is my fault)
- Cable connecting shifter to derailleur is not connected. (This was a nightmare for some reason)

That doesn't even get into the other issues with my bike - like how my stupid saddle squeaks and makes all this annoying noise.

Tools/parts I have purchased specifically to repair the bike:

- Chain whip
- Lock ring tool (to get the cassette off)
- Two sets of cable housing (one was too short - thanks Performance dude)
- Three cables
- Shimano XT rear derailleur
- SRAM cassette (11/34)
- SRAM chain
- Bike stand (which is unbelievably awesome)
- A huge WRENCH (300mm I believe at that maximum)
- Grease for the bike (Amy actually ate all of the grease on accident - thank God she didn't die)
- New rear hub

I think that's it. A very frustrating experience. Everything has just exploded in my face. I try to do one simple repair and it ends up causing other problems with the bike. I feel like I'm trying to save a 90 year old guy with cancer. I start to kill the cancer only to find he has a rotten liver. I fix the liver and then he has heart problems. I fix the heart and then ... well ... maybe it's best to just put a pillow over his face.

Matt wrote a limerick for me:

There once was a rider named Ryan
Whose mountain bike was nearly dyin'
He attempted repair
Which ended in despair
And now he's at Rock 'n' Road cryin'

So true.