First up: adjust the chain tension. It's been slapping, which means it got too loose. I adjusted the tension, got it locked down, and then took the chain off to clean it. Spun the rear wheel, and it went d-d-r-r-r--it was rubbing against the chain guard, in just one spot with each revolution, which meant I had to re-do it.
Took the chain and first sprayed it down with WD-40 and flexed each link to get the crud out. Once I'd limbered up the entire chain I then rinsed it off with laquer thinner, swishing a 6" segment through the solvent at a time. Once done, the container I'd been working in had a layer of rust and dirt on the bottom, though not as thick as the last time I did this.
Once the chain was clean, I dumped motor oil on it (as directed by the service manual) and let it drip until most of the excess was off. Put the chain back on, and...it was too tight. *sigh*
That'll teach me: clean and re-lube the chain first, then adjust the tension. It's just far enough out of proper adjustment that I don't want to ride it until it's fixed, and I won't be able to do that before Monday evening at the earliest.
But I'll get the chain adjusted right, and adjust the clutch, and do a few other things (and see if I can get the tach working again) and then we'll be all set for another season of riding.
* * *
Game of Thrones had its season finale tonight, and damn. Not gonna issue any spoilers here, but it was a heck of an ending.
Now, GoT is impressively nihilistic. In this series all sorts of bad things happen to good people, and the gooder they are, the badder are the things that happen to them. You can tell who is doomed to die a horrible fuckin' death just by plotting his alignment on the old D&D alignment table: the further up and to the left on that chart a person fits, the more likely it is that he's going to die. The worst people are safe as houses.
I am holding out hope that the entire reason everything is going black is in order to make the good guys' triumph even better. That would be fine, because the worse you make the world look before everything starts turning around, the better the story is. (Jim Butcher is an expert at this, which is why Dresden Files books are a must-read for me. Ditto for Fairy Tail, which uses exactly the same technique.) I am hoping that George Martin is just making everything as bad as possible before the good guys start turning the thing around. It would be masterful if the last book in the series was a triumph for the good guys and the white walkers were destroyed and peace and prosperity returned to the Seven Kingdoms.
I am informed, however, that it's not the way to bet.
The planned arc is seven novels long, though Martin has recently suggested that he might make it eight instead. There are six extant novels now (IIRC) and if there are no signs of a turnaround in even the latest one, it would mean the seventh would have to be a humdinger of a story to pull the world of Westeros back from the brink. The general comments on the series suggest that has not yet happened. (Maybe that's why we haven't seen it; he's written himself into a corner: "How the hell do get out of this shit?")
If Martin is writing a doom story, one that chronicles in loving detail how the civilization of Westeros fails and the race of men descends into unrelenting savagery and everyone freezes to death in permanent winter in the end, this is probably exactly where we could expect to be about halfway through the damned thing.
I am told that--at this point--the TV series is a synthesis of the novels, with some things being changed from the books' telling. Some folks have suggested that Martin may let the TV series finish the story, rather than him writing new novels (except perhaps after the fact) because that makes him more money anyway.
Either way, it's about ten months until the next new episode, and I've been given leave to read the next book in the series. That's how it is.
* * *
Well, I'd say it's officially summer: it's 77° outside at 10:30 PM. Yep. Summer.
Haven't seen one firefly yet, though.
