When your loved ones decide to ride

My nephew has a job he likes, and it's close enough to home that he can ride a bicycle to and from.
So for his upcoing birthday this year, he's asked everyone to chip in on various things to make his commute nicer.
I told him to come over on his way home from work and I'd hand him a bunch of stuff I no longer use that would be perfect for him (we're the same height and close enough to the same size in inseam that a lot of my old bikey stuff fits him).

So tonight, he stopped by on his latest bike, a 29'er that had been abandoned outside my sister's office and which went unclaimed for ninety days.  It's a cheap aluminum mountain bike with a shock fork and front disc brake, and a rear V-brake. After I'd handed him a rain suit, shoe covers, summer and winter gloves and some other small accessories I had extras of, I noticed that his bolt-on rear derailleur had been bolted onto the fender eyelet, rather than into the dropout behind the axle. Besides making the shifting suck, it caused the axle to sit precariously close to the end of the dropout, not an ideal situation.
I insisted on fixing this before he left -- "it'll take five minutes," I said -- and when I was done, I ran the bike through all its gears and he was amazed. "No wonder I only had two working gears!"
(Stock photo below shows what it SHOULD look like.)


I love it when it's easy to keep my loved ones happy and on their bikes.