Desert View - Day 18 - Decorative lighting OCD....

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5:56 am - Monday - November 27th - Grand Canyon - 38º F, humidity 35%, wind 3 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy (when the sun comes up).....forecast high for today is 63º F with an overnight low of 18º F......here comes the cold!

Sunday was a day off work for me, not so much for TLE......she had the 'close' shift and I had no shift.......👍  I really had no big aspirations for my free day, my legs were still sore from the Grandview Grind on Friday, so I thought I would take it easy, but if you know me that is not really possible.  There is always something which needs to be done......or should be done.....or, well, something to satisfy my need to overdo something I thought was already done.....😁  Plus, somewhere in the back of my mind I needed to dust off my Intense 5.5 MTB and do a little local exploring.....there are a number of fireroads which are begging to be surveyed.

It was such a nice day that I had to be outside doing something, right?  Initially I thought I would put up one of our sail awnings to add a little extra shade to our patio area......we really can't leave the patio awning deployed as the wind, much like Gardiner, MT, is not predictable.  Of course, once the sail awning was up I had to attach some Xmas lights to spice it up just a little.......

.......it just kept evolving over the course of several hours.....I think I need to find a '12 step program'.......sigh.

By mid afternoon I finally said to myself, 'enough is enough', and moved on to my next project for the day.....take a mountain bike ride, and work the bugs out of the shifting issues my Intense 5.5 has developed from lack of consistent use.  The front derailleur seemed to be frozen, and I was unable to get it to shift between the front three sprockets.  The same could be said for the rear derailleur, so a ride was in order to see what the issues were.  Before I rode I did take time to lube all the pivots on both derailleurs, and added some air to my rear shock absorber.  On my initial short ride I rode the foot path trail over to the General Store and back, made a few adjustments and then headed down the fire road which begins just around the corner from where our Newell is parked.

The initial section of road, about 1/4 mile, is nicely graded until you pass the Desert View sewage treatment plant, then it begins to deteriorate, but that is what mountain bikes are for, right?  Finally, about a mile down the fire road.....I say 'down' because as soon as you turn on to this road it begins to descend......I  came to an abrupt stop.....I had basically been standing on the pedals for the entire mile until just before a series of switchbacks accelerates the descent.  By this time the road had become pretty rough and I knew it was going to be difficult to ride back up what I had just coasted down, so I got off my bike and took a few pictures of the amazingly clear view......

 Hi clearance vehicles only

......you can just see the canyon in the distance through which the Little Colorado River flows.....then I added a video of the area for perspective.....

.....all the way down to this point I could tell the adjustments I had made, plus the lube I had applied had made absolutely no difference, so I headed back to the trailer where I spent the next hour, or so working on the problem.  I discovered that the rear derailleur was totally out of adjustment, and was finally able to get it to shift through all 9 sprockets both directions.  Then I turned my focus to the front derailleur.  Ultimately I detached the cable that connects the thumb shifter to the front derailleur and pulled off all the cable housing.  I then discovered the problem was a bad section of cable housing, so I removed it, and replaced it with some newer housing, reconnected everything, and voilà.....it worked properly once again!  Just as I was buttoning up my project I heard the VW pull into the site next to our site....TLE was home from her 'close' shift.....and that was my day.  I put everything away, closed up the trailer and joined TLE inside for the evening.

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