Oh. I geddit.
A couple of weeks ago when I first ordered parts for Yellow Bike, Nashbar included an extra chain in the order at no charge. Since they were on sale ($6.45, half-off their regular price, and about a third of local prices), I’d ordered two—one for each bike—and here was a third one, clearly indicated on the packing list as included at no charge.
I couldn’t figure out why, so I just said, “Thanks, Nashbar.” and put the third one in the spare parts bin.
Yesterday it occurred to me that, with Yellow Bike’s higher gearing (it’s chainrings are 52/42/30 vs. Bike’s 48/38/28) that I’d better get a lower-geared cassette for it, due to all the climbing in the Great Finger Lakes Bicycle Tour.
Given the choice of blowing out a knee or a lung, a second 12-28 climbing cassette (at only $17.99 on sale), seemed a reasonable thing to add to the order I placed yesterday. So now each bike has a “corncob” cassette for riding the flats around town, (See the Dictionary of Roadie Slang) and a “climbing” cassette for the hills to the south and east.
Nashbar’s cassettes are nice, shiny nickel-plated steel. Their chains are ordinary dull gray steel, which look just fine on Bike’s plain aluminum cassette. Since I’m OCPing Yellow Bike a bit, I added an nice shiny nickel-plated steel chain (SRAM’s PC-68 at $27) to my order from Bike Stop when I ordered the new crankset.
‘Lo, the shipping confirmation comes from Nashbar today, and don’t cha know there another free chain included? Apparently, when you buy a cassette, at least when you buy an 8-speed cassette, you get a free chain.
So now I have four spare chains for Bike, thanks to Yellow Bike. Being able to swap parts between the two bikes is the whole reason why I’ve stayed with Sora on Yellow Bike, rather than upgrading to Tiagra or 105.
Speaking of climbing cassettes, I think I’ll mount Bike’s 11-30 cassette in anticipation of TNUA tomorrow night. They’re calling for major snow and maybe the two lower cogs will help.
Finally, today I stopped by Towner’s and bought a 8mm hex wrench and a crank puller. So that they could sell me the correct crank puller, they asked me the year and model of the crankset in question.
“2000 Sora,” I said.
There was a bit of discussion over when Shimano switched Sora from square taper to Octalink. Finally they decided it was probably square taper. “But double-check after you pull the crank bolt,” they said. “We’ll exchange it if that’s the wrong puller.” Fair enough.
It was square taper and the puller worked just fine. And yes, I checked. Bike uses a square tapered bottom bracket, so the crank puller I bought won’t be used only the once.
Now I’ll have to remember to tell Full Moon Vista that although they’re removing a square taper bottom bracket, I need an Octalink one installed.
