I think it worked?

Yesterday I went about bleeding my brakes - specifically my rear as it had gone soft... ok.  That sounded like it might be dirty - so stop twisting my words and making them dirty!

I watched a video or two, read the directions, and got everything ready to go.  I got all the way to pushing the fluid through the system to release the brake lever when I realize I had tied down the wrong brake lever... what a freakin idiot!  I Crossed my fingers and attempted to pull the correct lever and repressurize... things seemed to go well, but the lever pulled all the way to the bar when I was through.

Wonderful.

Round two.  I tied the correct lever this time.  Completed everything.  And the lever wasn't as soft, but didn't feel all that much different then it had prior to the bleed.  FFFFFFFFFFFFF

I was not a happy camper.  Instead, I was a frustrated camper.  Thoughts of taking it to the shop to see what/if I was doing something wrong entered my head.  But I didn't have time to do that if I was going to ride today.  So I said F it and went about completing another change.... did you catch it in the photo?

I adjusted my brake levers back to their normal reach as the bleed instructions mentioned they should be within 75-80mm of the centerline of the bar for the best performance and magic happened.  My rear brakes felt GOOD!!!  I did something right!!  I guess with little room to pull they felt soft, but released to their full "man pull" range they sat right up and did their job.  Ok, so maybe they didn't deserve the finger, my bad.

My parents are in town visiting, and while visiting me they also wanted to visit some relatives we have down in SC.  Annie was working at a camp in SC so my plan was to drop my parents off, visit Annie and see the camp, and then get a ride in at Riverwalk before returning for my parents.

Annie was called back to the main office a minute before I got to the camp, so that was scrapped.  I headed straight to a trail I have yet to ride, on legs that haven't seen the dirt of a trail in about 2 weeks.  I LOVED the trail.  It is singelspeed heaven, or hell, depending on how much you like to hurt yourself.  MUCH more elevation than I had expected, and I loved every slow turn of the cranks as I climbed my way to the top of everything it had to throw at me.

Even though I was loving the trail, frustrations from the morning seemed to follow throughout the ride as the hunt for the creaking bits began.  Throughout the ride I stopped numerous times to adjust everything I could think of.

which one of you bastards??

First, it was the new change, the saddle swap - did you get it right?  Bolts could have been tighter I guess.  That didn't take care of it so I checked the crank - good.  Chainring bolts, one was loose so it was a good thing I was checking - got that tightened up.  BB - fine.  Stem, fine, but I gave it a tighten anyway.  I even checked the damn bolts on the rear wheel.  Nothing could keep it from creaking.

As best I could tell it was the saddle as it seemed to be more pronounced when I was sitting and I seemed to be able to make it happen with a slam of my ass... again, get your mind right.  But, you know, on the trail you can never really tell.

I knew it was you...

It was at this point, as I was rueing my saddle (the most likely suspect) that I recalled that I had NOT regreased the bolts after I cleaned all the grime off of that when I switched out the saddle... dumbass.

Likely a little grease in there will help everything quite the fuck down!

As I was leaving the trail I drove by this.

The Giordana Velodrome.  I had heard tell of it, so I decided to stop and check it out.

It was neat watching these three work together and trade pulls at the front

Looked like they were doing a little class in the field there for newbies.

It's pretty sweet.

I wouldn't have thought this before, but actually being there it kinda looked fun.

Oh yeah, on the way back to the pterodactyl  I did a quick test of the bike on the paved greenway to identify the creak.  And by bouncing and slamming the bike around I was again pretty damn certain that the only thing that could make it creak was my fat ass...  saddle will be removed, bolts greased (maybe the rails for good luck) and reassembled with love.  I'll let you know how it goes.