On Politics and Bottom Brackets

Lesley was asking me about the plans some Florida (why is it the dateline for all the craziest things that happen in the United States seem to be somewhere in or very near Florida?) pastor has for burning a bunch of copies of the Qur'an. Now I will grant you I thought the response to the Danish Muhammad cartoons thing was way over the top, but this is very different, mostly because it is almost completely the reverse of the Danish cartoons.

To the reader, one must understand that I am a bibliophile, I have a passion for books and reading almost as much as I have a passion for riding. I find the notion of book burning repugnant and the idea of attacking someones religion by defacing or destroying the underlying ideals manifest in printed form repulsive. That something like one and half billion Muslims are enraged by this idiot Rev. Jones is unsurprising, that even Sarah Palin does not approve is only a modest surprise, but you know when you the nations foremost lunatic saying your actions are wrong... well I guess I'm just joining a very large choir.

Oh and yes, congratulations Mrs. Palin, you beat out Rush Limbuagh, Glen Beck and Bill O, that's real spunk to beat those guys to the top of the lunatic pile, and so quickly. You go girl!

Anyway enough angry ranting about lunatic attention seekers... although, well Toronto has a municipal election coming up and I just want to say, as I have said all too many times before, this "war on the car" is crap, the real war is a civil war. Now that I have to drive too work so much, it is painfully obvious, don't allow trucks on highways during rush hour and really crack down on illegally stopped or parked cars during rush hour. Bikes aren't the problem it is vehicles that block lanes or need too much space and time to accelerate or change lanes.

Anyway as for biking, well I've got Jordan back!! Yipppeeee! What happened was a chain ring bolt had come off the crank and mashed itself into the chainstay where Specialized has a metal plate to protect the stay. Anyway the metal plate was all ripped up and rubbing right up against the chain ring (yes I will have to replace that chain ring :( - but at least not right away.) I thought I simply had a busted bottom bracket. Anyway when I took the crank off to replace the bottom bracket I saw the sorry state of my chainstay. Well thanks to Mr. Carbon Fibre, aka Malcolm Munroe and Specialized I was able to get a replacement part and have it expoxied down. Malcolm (a skilled machinest) was able to look up the tables for the bolts that go into my chain ring and it turns out that if you have aluminum bolts (standard on the Shimano Dura-Ace 7900 crankset) torque the bolts to 12Nm or about 8.86 foot pounds. Yet another reason to always have a torque wrench when doing bike repairs, its just too bad Shimano does not document that torque anywhere.

Lesley and I went to DC last weekend, maybe this weekend I will write about it, but since all the images are still on the SD card at home, I'm going to put off writing about Washington.