Maybe Creed was ahead of their time...

I somewhat injured myself over the weekend while doing all the parts swapping between my bikes. While removing a pedal (or was it a crank?) I was leveraging myself in a precarious position with my thumb on one side of the chain stay and my forward momentum on the other. When the stubborn threads released the potential energy I was aiming in a poorly chosen direction I managed to snag my thumb on the stay as the rest of my hand dove freely past it, thus I ended up hyper-extending my thumb... the same thumb that was causing me problems last year. This makes me wonder if I wasn't doing something similar just a year ago, but since I don't blog about every injury I sustain while working on my bike (I do it quite often) I have no written record of such an event taking place.

I was going to stage a dramatic re-enactment of the incident last night while The Pie and Fajita were out and about. With the re-enactment caught on "film" I was then going to post it here so I could save myself from writing the above narrative. Why didn't I get around to it?

I had to head over to me mar's place.

No, I wasn't helping her pick out a new caravan, but it was time for the application of her pain patch which needs to be done every three days. This tiny little piece of plastic coated in some pain relieving drug has to be carefully adhered to her clavicular area. It comes in a tiny pouch that is hard to open, and it's stuck to no fewer than four pieces of plastic that require the manual dexterity of a person who can paint The Last Supper on a pinhead to sort it all out. That was the easy part.

She also let me know her sliding keyboard tray had fallen off her desk. The next hour and a half was spent trying to reassemble something that was never meant to be disassembled.

"No disassemble!"

Anyways I had to take the tray home and get out some real tools. I spent a decent amount of time chasing twelve ball bearings all over my hardwood floor (that eventually ended up being only six ball bearings), and bending and re-bending things that were riveted together in a manner that was intended to discourage any disassembly. Eventually I got it all (well most of it) back together and headed back to her place with a slightly less than perfect sliding tray.

So I when I got home I skipped the video and drank a beer instead. My apologies... you gotta have priorities.

To all you ISIS haters from yesterday:

I knew about the downsides of ISIS back in 2006 when I bought my Middleburn crank. I really wanted the Middleburn, but I didn't want a square taper crank as I was going with a Bushnell EBB on my new frame which requires occasional maintenance (disassemblage and grease), and since the crank has to come off to do that I was afraid of wearing out the taper (like what happened to me in the nineties with almost every square taper I had). Crank Brothers assured me their bottom bracket was "different" when I called them on the phone, and that they had thought theirs out, and it should last a long time. Well I guess it's the thought that counts.

Yes, now I have a standard BB shell and sliders, so a square taper woulda been nice at this point... had I never experienced how good a truly stiff crank feels.

I know XTR is sublime, and I think it's bearing preload is the best one of the bunch. Unfortunately they're like $400 on eBay, and you still have to buy at least one annoying proprietary tool that costs way too much for a hunk of steel. So for now it's Race Face, and we'll see what I can do for 2010.

God, writing about bottom brackets and cranks makes for some dull reading. I need to call George as he always makes talking about the finer points of ceramic VS steel bearings a little more pleasant (even if it annoys his better half to be in the same room hearing to idiots wax philisophic about bike parts).

Is Liz Hatch's dad....

photo cred: cyclingnews.com

really...

You tell me.