My newest hero …

Is The Bicycle Tutor, Alex Ramon. Ramon's site has videos showing how to perform bike maintenance and repair along with his concise explanation mostly in voiceover. It appears the site went up in December. Most of the current offerings are very basic — how to change a tire, how to adjust a derailleur and so on. The video arrangement indicates that the guidance will become more complex as time goes on. So far this is all stuff I know but it helps so much to see it and see it again. I breathlessly await the next installment.

Taco Tool to the rescue

Or at least that's what it used to be called. Anyway, I was glad I had one recently when my handlebars started to slip. What it is is a folding, palm-sized bicycle multitool with a buttload of allen keys, Phillips and standard screwdriver blades, tire levers and chain tool and so much more. So when I noticed my bars dropping, I stopped, unzipped my seat bag, extracted the multitool, tightened the offending allen screws, replaced the taco in the seat bag and roared off. Pedro's, the bike-tool impresario that issued the Taco Tool until at least 2004, now produces an equivalent tool that is shown at right. Get one. It can keep a pain in the ass from being a ride stopper.

The other Thor's younger brother

The accompanying picture is of Ted, the Norse god of bicycle repair. Recently deciphered runic texts, provided by Carl Fogler from the annals of Trygve Lode, reveal the following:
"[Ted] is holding Mjollnir, the fabled metric wrench of the gods, feared by the Rime Giants (sometimes translated as Corrosion Ogres). His purely historical headgear should not become the subject of helmet wars."
Lode goes on to explain the nature of Mjollnir — and its continued existence — as well as other, underappreciated elements of Norse legend: "[T]he so-mythical-as-to-be-utterly-forgotten Spanner of the Gods had fallen into my hands. While rushing home to fetch this legendary tool — aided and abetted by the redoubtable Terrylee — the long-lost Norse myth, 'Spam and the Spanner,' which told the story of how Spam came to be the sacred food of the Vikings was...um...recovered."
Sometimes the mead really does drip from Valhalla.

Look — down the road …

It's Bicycle Repairman! Kudos to Gears 4 Beers Google discussion group for posting it.