Shameful admissions

[Katherine]

Well, I've kept to my new year's resolution to keep my bike clean, including mickling the chain, but learning how to fettle it has been put off.
The most frustrating thing that I wish I could do properly, is tightening the quick release levers so they end up in the right place!

However, I can track stand briefly and I'm practising all the time; I can ride with no hands for a while and drink from my water bottle whilst riding.

 

[jonny jeez]

Spoiler: What fun

heheh

 

[hatler]

Trying to adjust cantilever brakes generally ends in the brakes not being as well adjusted and me going barmy.

 

[glenn forger]

Bods like @DCLane make me feel proper inadequate. That bloke repairs eleventy-twelve bikes before breakfast then when he's waiting at the bus stop he finds an old coat hanger and some chip wrappers and makes another bike out of it.

 

[cyberknight]

Installing a brake cable, the little plastic bits either side of the bit where the cable sits in the shifter always fall off and drive me nuts .

 

[Saluki]

I can't track stand, pull wheelies, build wheels, bunny hop or anything like that. I can change a tube and do a gear service as long as I don't have to touch the front derailleur as I always muck that up and can't get it back to where I started. Actually I'm a bit hopeless but then there is a nice man around the corner whom we ply with cake to sort bits and bobs out for us.

 

[NorvernRob]

Well, I've kept to my new year's resolution to keep my bike clean, including mickling the chain, but learning how to fettle it has been put off.
The most frustrating thing that I wish I could do properly, is tightening the quick release levers so they end up in the right place!

However, I can track stand briefly and I'm practising all the time; I can ride with no hands for a while and drink from my water bottle whilst riding.

The trick with QR levers is simply to hold the lever open, opposite where you want it to close, and tighten up the other side until it's at the right tension to close rather than spinning the lever side.

I've never serviced a hub, though I haven't had the need to yet. I'll probably do what I usually do and watch a few YouTube videos!

 

[jefmcg]

I go to cake shops instead of making my own

 

[stoatsngroats]

I can't do wheelies. Does that count?

Me neither, and I try every ride on the tandem, but she just won't have it!

 

[Captain Slackbladder]

General bike maintenence. With working and two young children I generally don't have the time to be faffing and cleaning them, much prefer the riding bit.
Both bikes end up being serviced more than they should atm...

 

[Pat "5mph"]

I'm not bad at the maintenance/mechanics, but, boy!, what a disaster of a rider I am!
Can't do tight corners, can't do u-turns, scared of downhill, 5mph max on the flat

 

[400bhp]

I knocked a forum member off his bike

 

[raleighnut]

I use the electric assist on my trike to 'scalp' spliff smoking chavs on MTBs.

 

[anothersam]

C'mon Sam, you have to have a go at bar wrapping. It's not that hard and when you do a good job it's a very satisfying one.

I would have to unwrap a perfectly nicely wrapped set of bars just to wrap them again, which seems such a waste of someone else's talent for the selfish purpose of acquiring a new one myself.

gear inches are an Edwardian concept. It is calculated as the product of a gentleman's tweed Knickerbocker inside leg and deerstalker hat size, divided by watch chain length. For ladies is is bustle size plus number of whalebones in corset divided by number of ribbons on bonnet.

Sounds like Sheldon Brown's gear calculator, v. 1.0

two tyre levers to get a tyre off - you're having a laugh right?

see below

I can mend a puncture. It takes me an afternoon, by the end my hands are bleeding, the tyre lever's snapped, the cat's been booted across the room and I've used up all the swear words I know.

Hope I can be of assistance.

I CAN trackstand like a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus.

here's one someone made earlier

You can leave your hat on.

Are people just going to let this go??

Spoiler: de rigueur

Hid my perversion in plain sight. See also happy in your work, dug up from archives.
Sound proofed room optional, though it comes in handy for any howls of pain if I snap off the end of a strut and it pings back in my eye.

Trying to adjust cantilever brakes generally ends in the brakes not being as well adjusted and me going barmy.

I get that way with V-brakes. Can adjust them, more by luck than anything. Really just prefer not to have V-brakes.

Despite having made a gazillion posts here I didn't know how to do those spoiler thingys

I only figured it out by replying to somebody's spoiler'd post then looking at the code.

I can track stand briefly and I'm practising all the time; I can ride with no hands for a while and drink from my water bottle whilst riding.

Riding no-handed is the bestest feeling in the world; definitely a life skill worth having.

Trackstanding is chiefly of utility for the indecisive.

Can't do tight corners, can't do u-turns, scared of downhill, 5mph max on the flat

Not a big fan of downhill either. But so often it is a prerequisite for going up again.

 

[jefmcg]

Oh, this is a good one:

I used to sew, so made myself a cycling top to practice sewing with lycra. Decided to make it in unusual colours - what's the point in all that work if you make something you could just buy? So I used black fabric, with contrasting gold fabric. I was really pleased with it until my brother told me it looked like a Star Trek uniform.

It really did