Bike Repair (x2)
A couple weeks ago, my left shifter-lever popped on a sloping downhill, leaving me permanently in my smaller chainring (lower gear). The season is almost over, but leaving this problem until later was untenable because it forced me to ride most of my common route in an unnaturally high cadence.
Most of the gearing on my bike seems to be a lowest-value hodgepodge of different Shimano types (Tiagra shifters, Sora crankset, etc), so I want to upgrade its entire drivetrain. However, that's gonna require a lot of down time - and money - so I'll do it sometime this Winter (probably).
Until then, I don't want to continue riding with a broken shifter, so I Googled around and found a used set of shifters for not so much that will suit me until I do the bigger repair later.
I went to the Cyclery in Nihombashi, and bought better shifters than I had (Tiagra 4600, up from 4500), for less than half the price of buying them new (which seemed like a terrible purchase considering my plans).
They work perfectly.
Replacing them, allowed me to learn how that's accomplished, and to figure out how to index gears, which I can now do without much problem (it does get tedious, tho - and a little frustrating at first).
I did the repairs on different days. You can watch me (white, chubby) realize I could use more than one camera and end up with coverage I could cut between! And realize it looks substantially better if I clear the background little bit! You can't see it, but I also realized my hair is cut way too short....
I tried to have a little more fun with this video - including making much more interesting title cards. I kinda like how they turned out. But I wish I would've thought more about the first-half's set-up and execution. The second half is vastly superior.