listen to your bicycle

As previously noted, I'm riding a fifteen year old, third-hand bicycle. It's in fair shape and has, until yesterday, run pretty quietly.

But it'd picked up one of those light whisssk sounds with every pedal cycle, and I noticed that the front sprocket had become slightly off-center. So this evening I had a good look at it before cycling home for the evening.

It seems that over the course of the past three months, I've managed to so badly abuse the poor thing that four of the five nuts that hold the front sprocket in place were loose–and one of them was essentially ready to fall off the bike.

The morale of the story, as I take it: listen to your bike when it's making noise.