The dirty chain blues

I had a nasty incident yesterday, I was riding Rusty, a bike which has some minor derailleur issues.

Typically the chain slips off the derailleur idler wheel, but this time it was it's other bad habit: it dropped off the gears in the back, in between the gears and the frame. There it gets jammed in that tight spot, and I have to release the wheel to make a bit of extra space so I can grab it and put it back on to the gears. Yes, this means touching the chain, and since Rusty is the rain and bad weather bike, the chain is best-in-class in the dirty greasy chain department.

Lucky for me it fell off close enough to work that I could walk the rest of the way.

But I still had to deal with it after work, and I didn't have the wrench for the wheel bolt (stupid V-V bike shop replaced my old quick-release-equipped wheel with one with bolts--and that's not all, they also lost my old wheel!) but I was able to use small vice-grips (is there anything they won't do?) to loosen the wheel nut and I got the chain back on the gears.

But the collateral damage was a pair of extremely greasy hands. So I came back inside the plant and went to a shop washroom and used the grit-super-hand-cleaner and the hands were perfectly clean after a minute or two, excellent! There are advantages working in manufacturing!

Of course, now I have the Rusty toolbag in my backpack which has the wheel wrench tool and rubber gloves for these incidents in future... because there will be more I am certain.