On my easy ride today, my front shifter would not shift onto my big ring. Crap! I puzzled over it for a few minutes, then turned around and headed for B.I. Cycle, our local bike shop. Tom, who owns the shop, put my bike on the stand and immediately saw that the barrel tension adjuster had spun loose. Twenty second fix, no charge. That’s the island way of doing business.
Technical note – This tension adjuster has been coming loose for me continually. I need to tighten it nearly every time I ride. Usually I catch the problem when the chain starts scraping the shifter while in the big ring.
The store was not busy, so Tom and I started chatting. He told me how my neighbor and fellow cyclist Tony was nearly killed when a dump truck towing a trailer nearly clipped him on Fletcher Bay road. Tony was riding along the white line when the truck passed him. It pulled in too soon, and the trailer nearly slammed into Tony. He caught the whole incident in a video recording on his Cyclic Fly 6 camera. It looks like this gadget would be a great investment. I’ll buy one from Tom next time I’m in his shop, even though his price is quite a bit higher than Amazon.
Motorists often complain about cyclists riding too far out into the road, not understanding it’s purely defensive. Riding too far to the right invites trucks and other large vehicles to pass closely, leaving the rider no escape route. I can recount several stories where cyclists have been hit, one killed, while riding on the right side of the white line.
