All Day Backwards

Today is my first day, more or less, of Christmas break (I’ve still got some papers to grade and have to turn in students’ final marks, but it’s mostly all over but the shouting), and so I thought I’d commemorate the occasion by engaging in non-intellectual pursuits: running a load of stuff on the bike trailer down to Goodwill, organizing my sock drawer, and most of all, doing bicycle maintenance, especially on the Deathtap II and on this old Schwinn Hollywood I’m restoring for Jen.

My plan for the tallbike was to replace the cogset I’m using as a so-called “ghetto single-speed” with a single BMX cog, with the hope that doing so would alleviate some of the skipping under load I get, probably, I think, because the teeth on the old freewheel are all worn out. For the Schwinn, I wanted to install the new wheels I ordered, put on the whitewall tires and turn it into a bicycle.

So I pick up my purchases at 2020 and carry them back home, only to first realize that the single-speed cog I bought has teeth that are too fat for the chain I’m using. And then when I come into the basement to work on the Schwinn, I discover that it has 24-inch wheels, not the 26-inchers I’m purchased.

So, it’s back on the bike with the trailer, where I swap out the single-speed cog for one with skinnier teeth and trade the 26-inch front wheel I bought for one that’s two inches in circumference smaller.

Upon returning home, though, and re-installing the wheel (now with the right-sized cog) on the tallbike, I see that it won’t work at all: without the freewheel body to push the cogs wider, the chainline is completely off and pedaling just drops the chain immediately. So, I reinstall the original cogset, back to where I was four hours earlier.

Not a total waste: at least I got to the bikeshop twice.