The youngster and I are leaving first thing Saturday morning for a group ride (psst! Tour de Tohoku), so he told me earlier this week he’d be bringing over the bicycle beforehand, saving him the hassle of an early morning ride / ride on the train with the bike in a bag on Saturday.

I was happy for this as it would give me a chance to clean and oil his chain, something I doubt has been done since it was new, as well as to top up his tires — something we do at the start of each ride, it seems.

The weather forecast has been iffy these past couple of days, and we had a huge storm this afternoon, lots of lightning (taking out a security camera at my place of work) and flooding. But it had pretty much settled down by 4 p.m., and José let me know he’d be bringing the bike after work in a rental car.

I had this evening and tomorrow after work to take care of business, and Nana has booked a dinner reservation for us tomorrow. Right, to business, then. Apologies for the motion blur in the photo, but the chain wear gauge is clearly showing more than 1% wear. (Anything more than .75% is a reason to replace the chain.) Fortunately, I’d had my thinking cap on yesterday evening, and the replacement chain I’d ordered arrived today while I was at the office.

Shimano chains had previously used a blind rivet, and only recently switched to master link. (NB: I could be very, very wrong about this. But the chains I bought before had the rivet.) Fortunately I have a tool for this. Working in the dark was a challenge, but I had the bedroom light on and the curtain open, and that was (mostly) enough. The heat on the balcony, even at 8 p.m., was a greater challenge than the lack of lighting. Yahoo is telling me it was 25C, but I suspect it’s in the pay of Big Heat.

Anyway, the chain was soon on, lubricated, and duly run through the gears. No adjustment required. The next order of business was to check the tires. By the light of my torch (“flashlight” to youse New World yokels) the minimum pressure is 100psi. My pump was reading 20-30. I’m glad to say that it takes fewer strokes of the floor pump to bring these narrow tires up from 20 to 100psi than to take my 42mm tires from 30 to 40psi.

(Yes, José, I replaced the saddle bag after taking the photo. ヨッシュヨッシュ。。。)

The bitchin’ pink tires are 23mm. When I ordered the chain I took a shot in the dark and got a couple of 28-32mm tubes. I’m glad to say that José has at least one spare innertube, and I can probably send back the two I got.