The cable to the rear dérailleur on my bike broke over a week ago, which is frustrating as it means that I have to walk to the tube station instead of cycling, which takes longer, and means I have to get up earlier. Frustratingly the local bike shop was out of stock when I tried at the weekend, so I started this week walking again. I guess I'm being a bit slow here, because it didn't occur to me until this week to see if I could find a bike shop close to work. Fortunately there is one in Islington, which is within lunchtime walking distance, and it had a cable. I wasn't sure if there are different sizes of the nipple at the cable end (as for brake cables), but the man at the shop said that they are all the same, about the same time that I was checking against my sample.
This much was true. However, what turned out to be not so accurate was that whilst the nipple may be the same size on all, the cable diameter is not, and the new cable was of a slightly larger diameter than the old. So I had quite a job getting it through all the right holes and tubes, including trying to clean them out to increase the diamter slightly. Given that I don't have any nice small circular files for this job, the best I could improvise with was a needle in a pair of pliers. However, after this and a lot of other carefully applied brute force I finally got the cable all the way through, bolted into position, and the gears working once more. It was very satisfying taking the bike out for a ride up and down the Thames - so satisfying that when I nearly got home I turned round and repeated my whole journey.
However, the most important satisfaction comes from the fact that working bike == 10 minutes more in bed.
Or in my case, that would be 15-20 extra minutes. Dang, how I wish the repair guys would hurry up with it *grin*
