Disappointment Day

Today was somewhat unsatisfying and somewhat annoying.

First off, the annoying part – coming home I thought I’d be diligent and get on the trainer to do a 1hr easy spin. Of course that also provided me with the opportunity to play with my new-to-me (i.e., used and purchased off of eBay) PowerTap and continue to see just how badly I suck at this whole bicycle riding thing. To make the time pass a little faster I thought I’d watch some bad TV while spinning on the bike, so I put on some old episode of NCIS (yes, it’s bad, but mindless). Of course 3 minutes into it I realize that I’ve already seen this episode, so I hopped off the trainer and put on another one, and got back on the trainer.

For some reason CBS had decided that instead of NCIS I really wanted to watch a bunch of old guys jabbering about economics. Nope, what I really wanted to see was a Brazilian masquerading as an Israeli Mossad officer while accompanied by two or three other bad actors. Thanks a bunch, CBS.

About that time I found out that my PowerTap was fading in and out of existence – the power readings became rather intermittent. While this was supposed to be an easy spin, I’m also easily distracted and felt compelled to troubleshoot the damned thing. Thirty minutes and no joy later, I cried Uncle and gave up on the stupid training session. I didn’t want to do it anyway, so no big loss (apart from my general level of fitness and overall demeanor, that is).

Next up I thought that since all the parts for my new project bike along with a spiffy new bicycle stand are here, that I’d try to start the process of putting everything together. Along the way I expect to make mistakes and screw things up. Hopefully the mistakes won’t be too expensive to fix (like, you know, cracking the frame or something like that) and I’ll learn a lot about bicycle maintenance along the way.

First up with the project was installing the fork and headset. This is where the first little disappointment of the day showed up. Ok, it wasn’t the first – having to go to work this morning trumped that, but why rail against things I can’t really change much? So back to the fork. I suppose that it’s really a good thing, but as it turns out the previous owner really hadn’t cut the steerer tube much at all and since it is a carbon steerer tube, the stem really should be tightened such that it effectively surrounds the internal compression tube. Since the length of the steerer tube above the head tube is about 6 inches, and since the stem is only about 1 1/2 inches in vertical length where it attaches to the steerer tube, it needs to be jacked up about 4 inches for the moment. Until I have the steerer tube cut, that is. C’est la vie.

After effectively giving up on the fork, I thought I’d try my hand at installing the bottom bracket and crankset. Brave man, you may say. Bottom brackets are tricky, you may say. You’re going to destroy it, you may think. But you’d be wrong on all counts: I’m not brave, the bottom bracket went in easily, and I didn’t destroy it.

I did, however, destroy the 3/8″ to 1/4″ adapter for my $5.99 socket wrench set. Apparently they don’t build them with much strength in mind, because the tip of it sheared off at about 30-35 lb/ft of torque when I was trying to tighten the crank arm onto the spindle of the crank. That’s when I decided to call it a night, start taking pictures, and started drinking.