Originally Posted by
rholland1951
Took the Rawland on a 10-mile loop up through Arlington, Medford, and Winchester, up the Mystic Valley Parkway along the Mystic River, the Mystic Lakes, and the Aberjona, then climbing into the Fells...
I turned onto Governors Ave. for a step descent, then picked up High Street for another hill to climb, crossing the tracks in West Medford to pedal home on Harvard Street...
The top end of Governors Avenue is unprepossessing, but what unfolds is a staged descent on an avenue with aisles of mature trees and lovely old houses in a variety of styles, a record of local history if one could read it. Down I went, rolling fast on smooth pavement and no traffic. Too much fun to stop and take photos.
As I headed up High Street, an awkward shift resulted in my chain folding back and catching a link in the front derailleur cage. It never did
that before. After a little inspection, and some gentle trial-and-error, I tried putting a little counter-clockwise torque on the non-drive-side pedal, and that freed the chain.
I resumed riding the bike, and was pleased that I was able to perform the High Street climb and descent with no drive train malarky. I rolled home without further incident.
Originally Posted by
jimmuller
What in some circles is referred to as chain suck. With just the right combination of tooth spacing, chain ring separation, chain flexion, and stretching the chain gets stuck on a tooth on both chain rings. If you do it with enough force on the pedals it can get suck pretty hard.
The unfortunate consequences include dragging the chain against the chainstay and if you were pedaling hard enough pulling the RD forward hard enough to break it.
That happened to me on a commute one rainy night about 1/10th of the way home...
Originally Posted by
rholland1951
Aye. I'm used to an instance of chain suck on the Surly Trucker DeLuxe, in which the chain gets lodged between the small cog and the chainstay.
This thing with the Rawland was more exotic, involving as it did the FD cage and an origami fold of several inches of the chain on two chainrings of the crank. In either case, the pedals lock, but free wheeling continues, so no crashing so far.
Calling the dance of chain links and gear teeth with derailleurs and shifters perhaps deserves its own muse.
Hi @rholland1951 and @jimmuller,
I LIKED the above particular travelogue by rod because riding through Medford, Winchester, and the Fellsway is a favorite ride I don’t do too often since most of my riding is south of Boston through many roads well-known to our OP, @sherbornpeddler. Governor Street was a particularly pleasant discovery.
I overlooked the episode of “chainsuck, and passed by the photo (BTW, how pristine is your drivetrain, rod.)
Nice description of "an origami fold of several inches."
I once posted about my worst case of chainsuck a few years ago:
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
"Riding versus Training"
One other thing I learned during my trial phase of this training program is not to underestimate hills when doing intervals. I once was riding up a hill in too high a gear, barely pedaling to stay upright, and my chain fell off the front cog and got wedged between the seat tube and pedal crank.
I had to pull so hard to remove it that I bent a link, causing the chain to skip with each rotation.
I had posted about my last mountainous road ride in Pennsylvania in 2015:
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
…Compared to the hills of Metro Boston, I consider that I rode over two
mountains, shorter perhaps, but with grades as challenging as I had encountered in Colorado (but that was 35 years ago)
.
Originally Posted by
Jim from Boston
Now there are plenty of nice rides around Boston, but what made this ride special were the mountains; see BD’s Ride with GPS.
There were also some steep backroad hills,
and I occasionally got stuck in too high a gear, saying to BD,
“I gotta learn to respect these hills.”
↓↓↓↓
Last edited by Jim from Boston; 05-08-20 at 09:54 AM.