I got back from my (windy, short) ride on the Fuji yesterday, ate dinner, showered, etc, when I looked at the bike and noticed that the pedals weren’t settling properly. They’re LOOK-style clipless pedals and normally they hang with the front part up so that it’s easy to hook the cleat on and clip in. The left pedal was not doing this, and was sitting at some weird angle.

I went over and looked at it, and much to my dismay I saw opaque gray goo (grease) around the bearing. Furthermore, the bearing is kind of stiff and doesn’t turn near as easily as it should, hence the screwy resting position. I read my bike repair book, determined that these are probably sealed bearings, and that I screwed mine up. I looked at the bottom of the pedal, and the paint was scraped up a bit, so I must have banged it falling over when I didn’t clip my left foot in quickly enough.

Bah. I went ebay and found another set. I found that I had overpaid by nearly $30 on the original set ( and this is with MSRP ). Anyway, found another set on ebay, presently waiting to see how the auction goes. If all goes well I’ll still have saved a bit of $$ with labor and parts compared to going to my LBS, where I purchased the bike.

In that vein, I just ordered a repair manual for my ’95 Saturn from Amazon. I have an engineering degree, for chrissake. I should be fixing this stuff myself as much as possible.