Friday, July 22, 2005

Useless with tools

I'm nearly at the end of my week off looking after the kids, and as usual didnt do half the things i'd intended. I've nearly finished stripping the bannisters - on and off its taken me nearly 2 years, but it should look nice when they are waxed.
I bought a tool kit for the bike aswell, hoping to finally able to service the bearings in my rear wheel myself, but when it arrived it didnt have the right lock ring tool so I had to go out and buy one. With much enthsiasm about my new tools I had a go but just couldnt shift the lock ring, maybe i'd left it too long. So I ended up getting the bike shop to do it again, I asked them if they thought it had been stiff and they said not particularly but you really need to have it in a vice. So it looks like thats another thing i'll have to buy. I dont want to be crap at servicing the bike but for some reason I just am. I'm good at keeping the tyres pumped up and clean the chain regularly, but I just dont seem to have a good eye for the intricate tweeks a bike needs.
My mum and dad went home last weekend after looking after the kids for a week. We had great fun with the Geocaching while they were here. We found a good one on the sustrans cycle route between Lisburn and Belfast which contained a travel bug - which is a small tag or token which you move from site to site, the goal for this bug was to visit as many sites in Ireland as possible so we helped it on its way. The bug was called my dads ankh, it was a cross symbol that used to be worn by this blokes dad who died before he ever got to see Ireland, so he's doing it posthumously.
I like the cycle route between Lisburn and Belfast but its not ideal for road bikes. I'd love to get one of these for the route though, it would be a real buzz arriving at work on one of these every day. I wouldnt feel particularly safe using it on the main road but I can get virtually all the way to work by the sustrans route. But I cant decide whether I should get one of these for £600 or save up and buy a good road bike. Anyway, these are just pipe dreams at the minute because i'm skint. Oh well, maybe next year. Check them out at KMX karts.

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