“Arctic Conditions Bring Britain to her Knees!”

“Snow Joke!”
etc. etc.

I hear tell it’s snowing in Britain today. Well, I like a ride in the snow, but today I had to settle for the next best thing, a ride on a nice warm day, in shorts and t-shirt (I’m the scruffy one on the left, about to set out). Yep, while Britain shivers in the grip of the freezing fingers of death (at least, so says the newspapers), Novi Sad basks in warm sunshine.

Took the opportunity to go out and test-ride my new (well, second-hand) machine on a little 25km ride just out of town.

Crossed the river (Danube), headed up towards the part of Fruska gora known as Glavica, and then did something I was going on about not a couple of days ago. I mean what possesses a man…?! I thought I would “cut through the woods” down to the main road along “a path I knew”, only in the reverse direction to the way I had come when riding it in a mini-marathon last year. Why is it things look a lot different when you are going the other way? Anyway, not a couple of minutes later, I find myself carrying, nay dragging the bike through dense undergrowth along a path which doesn’t look as though it has been walked in a year, never mind ridden on a bike. Instead of doing the sensible thing and just turning back, that so-far-unexplained force drives me on down through the thorns, bushes, fallen branches etc. etc. until I finally really do come out where I was headed - mounting the bike for the last 30 metres and emerging from the woods looking for all the world as if I had ridden all the way down..!

Sigh… Anyway, the verdict on the bike is that the gears need a bit more adjusting, but more annoyingly, there is a bit of squeaking going on from the region of the front drive bearings, and an annoying vibration from the rear wheel. Sounds like material for a future episode of It Can’t Be That Hard, my series on bumbling amateur bike repair (see “Bike repair” category on the right) , probably entitled Part 5: Give Up and Take it to the Bike Shop.

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Posted on February 8th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: Biking - general, MTB Serbia (All)