Bike repaired!

Today I bought some parts to undo my ham-fisted "repair" yesterday and take care of a few other things. A new chain was at the top of the list, of course. I bought a SRAM chain from wheel girl and Performance was having a sale on the excellent Forté dual sided pedal (SPD on one side). I also had bought new brake pads to replace the ossified pads from Montano. After an hour of work, everything is working great! The brakes actually stop the bike now, and the pedals down creak and pop like they used to. It took an 18" pipe wrench to remove the old pedals. One thing that I discovered about converting a "normal" frame to a ss/fixie: those track frames with long horizontal dropouts are looking GOOD!

Bike "repair"

I got a flat tire during my lunchtime ride today, and it was on the rear wheel. I guess it hadn't occurred to me, but changing the tire is a little more of a pain in the ass with a single speed. Not having done any bike work for a long time, I managed to completely screw everything up. I managed to pop one of the chain pins out (first time ever for that), and spent the next few hours trying to get it in. Predictably, the chain was too short -2 links :(.