Merry ChristmASS

Thanks for the break.  It was nice.  I slept.  That was a waste of time.  I feel no better.  The good news being that I feel no worse.

Shoddy attempt at catching you up on the last week or so....

I got a shirt from Watts in the mail for Christmas.

Hipster filter and vignette border because... Facebook.  It's very nice, black, and quite tight.  I think Watts had it altered to make me feel fat.

Christmas Eve... I was off at 1:00... which turned into 1:25 because I'm a bike messenger and that happens.  The 5:12 Spoke Easy drinking club met at The Common Market at 1:12 which became 1:37 due to delays.

Obligatory nonchalant table shot missing 3/4 of the entire group.

After putting a hurt on myself for no good reason, I went home, ate with the family, and passed out on the couch.  I woke up a bit later, went into the bike room, tidied up, went to throw away the envelope my t-shirt came in, and found this:

I did not know Watts was an artist.  I still do not know.

Christmas day.  After the usual opening of wrapped things by my daughter, time was something I had plenty of to waste.  I decided to give myself the gift(s) I really wanted.

New bearings in my bottom bracket.  Enduro (no ™) has upgraded their seals and they include them with the bearing kit now.  Sweet.

Not sweet?  Trying to self-extract the self-extracting cranks and finding that the bolt just spins freely.  Hmmmm.  Remove the extractor cap and the bolt falls out... stripped threads.  Scratch ass, look in Race Face parts box, find outdated shit that's incompatible, go to the toolbox, find a Shimano self-extraction assembly that works, breath again.

The other gift... bleed the rear brake.

I read the instructions I had written while I watched the video on youtube months ago. Then I read the instructions that came with the bleed kit....
and then I decided there were too many steps.  I'm a busy man. 

In the end, I just hooked a syringe full of mineral oil to the caliper and put the cup on the reservoir.  Then squeezed (squoze) and whatever.

It worked.

 

The fluid did not look all that contaminated.  Good practice though, and in the process, I found the true culprit of my brake woes.

Sitting next to that stripped crank bolt?  Aluminum backed resin pads... the same kinda pads I vowed to never use with my XTR brakes ever again.  Ever.  Except whenever I put these in.  Which I don't remember at all.

Thursday's work related boredom brought me to produce this for The Angry "Singlespeeder":

Which he then turned around and used the next day in his post on MTBR, "The Angry Singlespeeder: A Look Back on the Best Haters of 2013."  He was nice enough to mention me and even link to my blog...

There's nothing more awesome than having a bunch of new traffic come over here when I'm on my first ever non-stage race/non-mancation/non-anything hiatus.  Thanks, ASS.

And when I got home from work on Friday, I got a box from Backcountry Research.

New stuff for 2014... once the store opens back up.  In my own (not-so) humble opinion, the most intuitive, secure, under the saddle system yet.  More about it when I can say something more than that (just saw that they updated their image last night and it's more revealing than mine).

More tomorrow, not strap related though.