Part I:
Monday evening. Did a ride with Ally, Telephone Trail near Bragg Creek,
Alberta. Finally dry enough to ride, between snow melt and rain. Nice
ride, 15km, about 350m over the loop, 1/2 and 1/2 single and
doubletrack, no bears (or even prints). Played around practicing
trackstands on the crests, when Ally got a bit behind.
Part II:
Wednesday morning. Ally decides to repeat the ride with a friend. She
is taking my bike because hers is at LBS for service. I forget to
remind her before I leave for work about the low normal rear
derailleur. I did tell her about it months ago when I put it on, but
she's not particularly technically minded, so I guessed she might have
forgotten. I miss her at home (she's already left), no cell phone with
her, can't find the nunber for the friend. I hope she'll figure it out.
When I get home from work, I find out that Ally had all sorts of
trouble getting up the hills. They looked at the drivetrain, but
neither realized the significance of the chain being on the 2nd
smallest cog. Since Ally had it in her mind that she couldn't change to
granny, once she had verified that was OK, she must have looked no
further. So she finished the ride grinding as far as she could up all
the hills, not changing gears. I prefer not to think about the chain
line. On the plus side, she discovered that momentum is your friend,
and got much faster on the downhills!
I kind of expected that she might be mad at me, but she was actually
pretty pleased with herself when she realised that she did the ride
singlespeed.
Ian