Mastering Mechanical Mishaps

I am on a roll. First, my bike would no longer shift up to the large chain ring. I had fully planned on taking it to the shop for an adjustment. I've tried reading a repair manual and none of it really makes sense to me. I do try to keep my bike clean. Here's a tip - do not get any cleaner or lube on your brakes unless you want them to squeal for a couple of months. Learned that one the hard way. But I thought I would try looking in the manual just to see if there was something I could try myself. Working with the gearing always scares me because I think there is the potential to really screw things up. The manual stated that you could do minor tweaks by turning the screws a half turn and then see what happens. If it gets worse, you just turn it back that half turn and try the other direction. I gave it a shot and was able to fix it myself - YEAH!

Then my Garmin Forerunner 305 wouldn't turn on at all. It wouldn't charge or anything. I looked through the users manual - but no luck. I was bumming because I love this watch and GPS system. Buying a new one would be very expensive, but getting this one repaired could take a long time. It's taken one month to get back a Timex watch that works with the Timex GPS and HR system - I sold off the GPS portion, but kept the HR monitor and watch for races. I don't mind swimming with this setup.

Of course, I was running 10 miles the next morning and now no GPS to track it. Prior to leaving for my run, I Googled "Forerunner 305 won't turn on" and lo and behold - I found the answer. I followed the instructions to reset the watch and it now works. Unfortunately, it barely had any power so I was unable to use it for my morning run. But it's good to go for next time.

Now if things would just stop breaking!