It's time for me to face up to the fact that I'm completely mechanically un-inclined. Sure, if it involves software, or drivers, or anything involving pecking away at little keys, I'm super. But once actual real-world objects start to get in the picture, I have problems. I was changing my bike tires last night. Changing the front one was very straighforward... got that one back on in record time. The back tire requires you to take off the chain, since the cassette is attached to the wheel. So, I break out my chain tool, pop the link, and like a dumbass I push the pin all the way out. Apparently I don't have anything in my toolkit to help you get a pin back in once you've pushed it all the way out, but I sat for awhile and tried in vain to just "line it up" and make it work. This obviously did not work, so then I thought I'd just shorten my chain by one link. That was going alright, until the new link I put back together wouldn't really bend right. Then I don't even know if I had it going through my derailleurs right, because it was making all these awful sounds and jumping around.

So, I'm going to do what I always do in these situations, and just throw money at the problem. I don't want to ask my friend who totally helped me set it up last time, because I feel like I wasn't a good student, and didn't learn all the stuff he was showing me while he was doing it.

It just frustrates me and makes me feel like an idiot to not know how to do basic operations on my bike, especially because it's become a more prominent part of my life in the last year. (sigh) And it would have been a beautiful day to ride today, too. Instead, I'm sitting at my desk, feeling fat and unsatisfied, and I still have grease all over my hands, repeated scrubbings and all.

*Update:* If you check the comments you'll see that I have the <ComicBookGuy>Greatest. Friends. Ever.</ComicBookGuy>