I like to ride bicycles. And whenever I head for an epic ride, I never leave without a helmet, a pump, and my trusty repair kit. So while out for a ride today, my world got rocked by the disruptive boing of a snapping bike chain. I thought, no problem, my mini chain breaker will have me back on the road in a jiffy, like it had so many times before. Wrong. The pin on my chain tool had fixed its last chain and silently broken off without me noticing. So I stood there, like MacGuyver with a bend corkscrew, lamenting my injured multi-tool. I’ve actually had this tool longer I’ve had any of my bikes. But you gotta move on. Which means I had to think. Being a careless sort sometimes, I had failed to repack some zip-ties (a repair kit essential) into my little kit. So after sniffing around the ground not unlike a dog, I found a discarded drinking straw. When bent properly, a used straw becomes a reasonable way to keep a bike chain together. So with the chain barely held together with a soiled piece of plastic, I was able to ride home by using a sequence of a quarter pedal forward followed by a quarter pedal backwards. Hey, it saved me a long walk in cycling shoes, which is never fun. So the lesson here: there’s no such thing as trash. Only potentially useful items that are just between things.
Bravo! MacGuyver would be proud!
Wow, I need to check for comments more often. Good to hear from you Vince. I’m thinking of sending the link to Richard Dean Anderson himself.
Rad—totally love the roadside ingenuity!
Thanks, Tim! Nice to hear from you.