Content Advisory: This blog post is written and designed with children ten years old and younger in mind. Kids, you can go ahead and skip this paragraph and start reading. Adults, make sure you get permission from your child before reading. If you don't have a child, it's okay to get permission from your niece, nephew, 2nd cousin once removed, or that little girl who lives next doors who's always leaving her toys in your driveway (In all seriousness, I encourage all of you to share these blog posts with your children, maybe even read them to your children who are not yet able to read).
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Today I took a break from riding my bicycle and visited with my cousin Faith, her husband Tyler, and their son Jax near Jackson, Tennessee. I had a good time visiting with them; I also did some work getting my bike ready for tomorrow, and spent some time enjoying some beautiful sights.
Whenever you rest for a day on a long bicycle trip, you can't just sit around all day and do nothing. You have to make sure that your bicycle is ready to keep going! So today I fixed a few things on my bicycle. First of all, I went to a nice bicycle shop here in Jackson called Hub City bikes, and I bought a few things that I needed.
Before I could get started, I had to inventory my tools. An "inventory" just means that you check to make sure that you have everything you need. Most of my bicycle tools are in a small camera case, so I laid them out to make sure that I had everything I needed. Here is a picture of my inventory (you don't have to read the list of all the tools (in red letters, below the picture)--it's kind of boring but I included it anyway):
Bottom row, from left to right: two nuts, one valve adapter tool, two watch batteries, one pair of vise grip pliers, one allen wrench, one multi-tool, one adjustable wrenches, and three cone wrenches of various sizes.
All of these tools fit easily into the small camera bag you see behind them, and that camera bag fits into another bag that I carry on my handlebars. Each tool has a different use, but I carry all of them because I never know what's going to go wrong. If I get a flat tire, a wrench isn't going to do me any good; I have to use the pink tire levers, a spare tube (which I carry in another bag), and my air pump (which is attached to the bicycle frame). With these tools, I can fix a broken chain, I can fix a wheel that is bent, I can fix my brakes or shifters if they're not working right, and do many other things. But if I didn't have any tools, even if I knew everything about bikes there was to know, I wouldn't be able to fix them. That's why I try to take good care of my tools and make sure I don't lose them. I keep all of these things in this one bag so that I always know where they are and can use them if I have any problems on the road. Do you have anything that you use a lot that helps you do a lot of different things? How do you feel when you can't find it?
So I did three different things today to get my bike ready for tomorrow. My bike has brake shoes that rub against the rim to make the wheel stop, but the brake shoes were getting kind of old. So I put new brake shoes on for the front wheel, then I used my wrench and the pliers on the multi-tool to tighten the brake cables so the brakes would work right. Then, I put a new water bottle cage on the front of my bike. A water bottle case is just a small piece of metal wire that holds the water bottle on your bike. My old one was broken, so I got a new one from the bike shop and used my allen wrench to put it on. Finally, my bicycle has a special computer called an odometer/speedometer that tells me how fast I am going and how far I have ridden. The way the odometer works is that there is a magnet on the spokes that sends a signal through a sensor every time the wheel spins around. The old magnet was broken and I had to tape it to the spokes with some duct tape until I could fix it. I got a new magnet from the bike shop and put it on. Now I have a magnet that is held on tightly with a screw, not just with duct tape, so I'm not worried about its coming loose.
Here is a picture showing all of the repairs I did on my bicycle today:
You might be wondering what my bicycle looks like with all of my bags on it (I wasn't carrying the bags today, because I left them at my cousin's house). Here is a picture of my bicycle from a few days ago, fully loaded:
So now I'm ready to go for tomorrow, I just have to load my bags up and go! Today I rode my bike a little bit (without the bags), and relaxed next to a lake. The sky had a few clouds and the sun was shimmering across the lake as trees towered in the distance. Even though I know that God is with us everywhere we go, I often find it easier to pray and talk to God when I'm in beautiful place such as that. I wanted to share with you a picture that I took of the lake:
I wish you all a blessed day, until tomorrow, as I head east toward Nashville!
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