Elizabeth Myers32 Just take it into a shop—they'll have you back on the road in like 10 minutes. Honestly, the odds of you fixing this yourself are about the same as hitting the Powerball.
Man, you’re seriously making a mountain out of a molehill here—you can pick up a front derailleur for next to nothing anywhere. I mean, you could probably find one sitting on a shelf at a local Walmart or even some random shop down the street. Just grab a used one if you want to save a few bucks, slap it on, and get riding.
Last year over at Target, I picked up one of those deals for about 40 bucks—you get this little organizer bag designed to sit right under the driver's seat, and inside it’s packed with a hex key set, a tire repair kit (glue, plugs, all that good stuff), and some small plastic tire levers. Honestly? The tools are solid. The patch kit does the job just fine, though the levers are a bit soft and tend to bend if you aren't careful. Still, for the price, the whole kit is pretty decent.
vividgardener192 said:Hey, if anyone’s feeling generous... could you just list out everything I actually need? Like, which hex keys and Allen wrenches should I carry? And more importantly—what usually ends up getting trashed when you're out on long rides or hitting the rougher trails?
Honestly, anything can go wrong—it really just comes down to luck. You might have a spoke snap (or several), blow an outer tire, or deal with a puncture. Sometimes it's just a little hole in the inner tube, other times you catch something sharp and slice the outer casing wide open. Chains snap, brake cables fray, gear cables give out—the usual stuff. Personally, I've mostly just dealt with flats. As far as tools go, I just carry exactly what I showed in that photo from a few pages back—everything fits easily in a saddlebag or one of those small triangular frame bags. Most modern bikes use hex bolts these days, so you don't really need a whole set of old-school wrenches, but you'll definitely want a 15mm wrench handy if you ever need to swap out pedals.
I picked this one up from Interspar, and honestly, I’ve got zero complaints. The material feels pretty solid—nothing flimsy about it—and it doesn't warp or bend even if you have to crank things down a bit tighter.
My little roadside survival kit is basically just a multi-tool with everything from flathead and Phillips screwdrivers to a spare tire plug kit and some small plastic tire levers—plus a pump. It all fits right in a tiny pouch under my seat, or if I’m wearing a backpack, I just toss it in there. Obviously, I don't keep the pump tucked away in that little bag under the seat.🙂
I've been sticking with Google Chrome for the last month or two—it just feels straightforward and honestly pretty snappy. At this point, I'm not even really looking for anything else. I used to be an Opera devotee, hands down, but I barely touch it anymore. Every time I try to download something, the whole thing just freezes up—I can't click any other links or jump to a different page until the download is totally finished. That little glitch drives me absolutely insane.
What was the name of that one movie where two kids basically torture that mobster Kovac? "do Koska," I think it was called... just about an hour of pure, intense suffering!
