A good week for the Journey.

 A good week for the Jorney.

I started this week off so well and continued it until today. There was almost no rain this week and I got out as much as I could and I ended up getting in 73 miles of cycling. I also ended up taking a day off and was able to buy a few things for my bike that it needed to ride better. I feel awesome after all the exercise this week and I can not wait to try and keep it up next week as well. I am a bit exhausted though its a good type of exhausted, like I am very tired but very accomplished.

Fixing my gravel bike.

I stated that there were things that needed to be replaced on my bike for a while but I had not had the time to really take care of things. This week I bought a few things and started simple with replacements. I was having a few minor issues with shifting and the bike was super loud when pedaling. I did use wax on the chain but I do not mind riding in the rain or snow so I figured it was going to rust. I did not expect it to rust as much as it has. That was not the main problem though, I rode enough to stretch out the chain!

I never really expected to ride the bike enough to stretch the chain out. I was able to pull the chain right off of the front cogs and there is a large gap when pulled the chain. I really thought when I got this bike that it was going to fail long before I had to replace the chain or I would replace something else before the chain needed replacement but it was the first thing to really need to go. 

After replacing the chain you can see there is almost no gap when I pull the chain. I messed up on the way I took the picture but y ou can still see the chain is not rusted and the links are all touching the cog. I ran into one problem after replacing the chain that I knew I was going to run into but the fix was so much simpler than I thought it would be. 

The rear derailleur has been through a few things. The stick being stuck in it is an old photo but it broke the cage a bit and the jockey wheel is far looser than it should be. I have a similar derailleur on another bike and the jockey wheel is not nearly as loose. After putting a new chain on I was prepared to put on a new derailleur but it worked fine.The jockey wheel is still a bit off but it seems like its fine so I figure I am going to run with it and see how long it keeps going. Now after riding the bike for just under 2000 miles I figured things would be settled in and replacing a chain would make me have to fix the shifter cable at the least. When I started shifting it was shifting awful and I was not shocked at all about that though what was a bit shocking to me was it was real close. Turning the barrel adjuster I was able to get it shifting perfectly. There is another minor problem I am going to ignore for a while as I have parts to replace it as well. The rear freewheel has a bunch of rust that I can see but its inside and hard to take a picture of but it looks like it is just the freewheel cogs and not the gub inside. I could be wrong on that but I can find that out later. 

Bike Wash and doing things wrong

I let my bike get far to dirty and it was nice this week so it was time to give it a wash. I grabbed an old baby bottle bursh that was ready for the trash, my hose, and a cloth to start cleaning. The whole bike might look fine from a far but once you get a little bit closer you can see how dirty my bike really is. 

I started out spraying it down with the hose to get the major chuncks off which did not do a whole lot but at least it was wet and ready to be soaped up. I grabbed the cloth and the old brush and got to cleaning. 

It took about an hour so the light is different but the bike is much cleaner. I got all the main things cleaned and used the brush to get into all of the cogs. I even took the wheels off to make sure that I was getting them properly cleaned. That is when I started to see more of the rust and got a birght idea that I read was a bad idea but I did what I did. 

You can see the limit screws are rusted on the front derailleur but the bike is so much cleaner. That is not the bad idea the bad idea is when I saw the rusted screws and thought of the best way to get rusted screws out and that is WD40. I read the can of WD40 I have and it said it protects against rust. Now I know you should not put WD40 on the chain or really much of the bike BUT its a 250 dollar Walmart bike that I have replacement parts for whats the worst that could happen? So after cleaning I put WD40 on freewheel and the other rusted up parts like those limit screws. I have bike grease for when I replace the freewheel but part of me wanted to just see what happens by doing things wrong. 

Other than using the wrong products on the bike I had to repalce the front brakes and its running as good as new. I am hoping to keep cycling a while longer on this bike before upgrading it. 

Diet and getting back to losing weight.

So the main point of this blog and the journey was to progress at losing some weight and getting to fit into pants that I had not fit into in a long time. As stated prior I fit in those pants but I have been getting a bit back up there in weight. I still feel good about my ability to exercise and I still have all the stamina but gaining weight has not been a good feeling. I know what must be done and I think I mentioned it prior but I need to get back to my diet. I put off really thinking about it too much but it needs to be done and I need to get the weight I have gained over the past few months off. 

I am going to fix my diet and continue riding my bike. Thank you very much for reading have and wonderful day!