Mechanicking
Mechaniching? Anyway, I’ve been re-learning all sorts of old lessons, most of which the hard way, from my riding of the first half of the Milano-Chiasso route.
The GPS reported I was about an hour away from my destination train-station, having been stopping to photograph the route and leisurely riding while recording voice notes in my phone and noticed there was about an hour of daylight. Time to forgo the notetaking for today and get to the station, right? Wrong! Time to fix a flat tire! Luckily to speed things up, I always have a spare tube with me… but it doesn’t speed things up much when it’s a tube for someone else’s bike. 
So I dig through my bag, hoping all the while the hole is findable and patchable (not in/near the valve stem or too big for a patch), for my patch kit. Luckily there was this puddle of brackish water next to me, so I inflated the tube and rotated it through the murk. Luckily there was a stream of bubbles pouring out, so I marked the spot, patched the tire, re-assembled stuff, and was on my way.
Lessons learned so far:
1. Make sure you have a spare tube with you (check), but also make sure that it’s a spare tube for *your* bike. *D’oh!*
2. Flats take time to fix! Leave extra daylight (time) for a flat, especially if you don’t have Kevlar-lined tires or goo or another flat-preventative measure.
3. (This one I didn’t have to learn the hard way, thanks to the ciclofficina) When fixing a flat or replacing an inner tube, always check the tire for foreign objects by feeling around *inside* it. If the glass/thorn/whatever is still there, you’ll replace the tire and it’ll become instantly punctured again.
Then the GPS batteries died (I’m not buying rechargeables from a Chinese bargain store again, regardless of the packaging), and I had forgotten my trusty Duracells at home. Time for the backups! Which died 20 minutes later. The backup backups? Luckily those brought me all the way in to the station (in the dark, with only my wimpy headlamp), but if they hadn’t, I’d have had some directions on a camera (whose batteries were also low).
Lessons here? Not so mechanical, but…
A. Bring extra batteries (not crappy ones)
B. Bring a paper map, or at least a paper list of the towns you’ll be going through, so you can ask someone where the next town is.
At the station, bikes weren’t allowed on the Regional train back to Milano, so I folded it up, stuck it in its suitcase, and sat, mud-spattered and content with my 55-km ride.
The next day, I was re-assembling the bicycle, putting the handlebars back on the horizontal piece that sticks out from the handlebar mast (that horizontal piece, I have learned from this stylishly attractive bicycle diagram, is called a stem). I over-tightened the bottom screw, such that the top screw went “pop!” What was that? It ripped out 5 or 6 entire threads worth of metal from the Aluminum handlebar-holder! For now it’s holding just with the top screw screwed all the way (likely holding on by 3 or 4 threads… :-/ ) and the bottom screw backed out a bit, but I worry about putting my aero bars back on (as I imagine they torque the handle bars around a bit), and also about the stem breaking completely on the road in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps I’ll replace the stem at the ciclofficina when I find them next, and if they have the part. Or maybe the sporting goods store will have one? We’ll see.
The biggest lesson!
Z: Don’t over-tighten stuff! Come on, George, you learned this 15 years ago, and again, it seems, ever 6-12 months thereafter. Tighten it *just* until it serves its purpose (in this case the handlebars not moving when you put weight on them) and maybe a tiny bit more.