Bah, Tube humbug!

The shortcut from the Central Line to the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road Tube station has been shut due to flooding. (Or so they claim; there's no water visible in the 60% of it that's visible through the metal grilles.) It's been shut now for weeks. Honestly, how long does it take to repair a water pipe? I'm tempted to alter the whiteboard up in front of it to assign blame to a fictitious London Underground employee: "SHUT DUE TO FLO    G".

More bike woes

So I look at my bike this evening, and the derailleur doesn't seem to be bent. But it is loose on its mounting. So I got out my allan key and tried tightening it, and the bolt just turns round forever: the screw thread on the frame has worn out. (Or possibly been destroyed through my actions yesterday.)

Still, at least the thing's still usable, huh? Huh? Well, not any more. :-(

I'm not sure at what point I buggered it up, or whether indeed it buggered itself up, but now I can't get the derailleur to move to the top end of gear cassette, or indeed to stay anywhere without risk of pivoting into the spokes. I tried fiddling with all three adjuster screws (the ones the guy at the bike shop told me not to try adjusting unless I knew what I was doing, though I'm sure my father showed me how to adjust them once before), and no position of any of them made any difference to the derailleur's position at either end of its range. I'm absolutely baffled by this, but unfortunately it looks like the upshot is that I don't have a workable bike.

My father bet my mother when they got married that he could keep their washing machine going for twenty-five years. In the end, he gave up after twenty-one, as the thing was constantly in need of repair. Well, my bike is also twenty-one years old (it's the best value for money birthday present I ever received), and, despite having paid the best part of two hundred pounds on it already this year, I'm beginning to think (at the prompting of my father and my brother) that maybe it's time to bite the bullet and get a new bike. Even if it does turn out to be reparable, I'm getting to be suspicious now of how long it's going to be before the next part wears out.

Which leaves the question of how I go about getting a new bike. Do I buy now in London, for significantly more than I would pay in Newcastle? Or do I wait three weeks until the next time I'm in Newcastle, and get a bike in (appropriately enough) Byker? In which case (a) it's cheaper, but I'm screwed if I ever need to take it back to the shop, and (b) what do I do in the meantime^*?

* I use my bike all the time; I'd be almost as hobbled without it as I would be with a broken leg. It takes as little as 30 minutes to cycle to work in the downhill direction, as against fifty to (more commonly) sixty by Tube; hence I only take the Tube twice a week; and I use my bike all the time for local transport. Also, I don't like to go more than a couple of weeks without cycling, as my muscles start atrophying and, whilst I am physically capable of cycling to work after a break, it really knackers me and I'll spend the next week too exhausted in the evening to do anything.