I think I may take up golf...

I love working on bikes, I really do. Most of the time. 

I do all my own maintenance and have built almost all my road bikes for the past 20 years.  Visitors to our house are astonished by my workshop, which displays a neatness and order absent from the rest of my life.

My passion for collecting rare vinyl is probably matched in expense and obsessiveness only by my desire to own every tool Campagnolo have ever made. 

I love the satisfaction of diagnosing a problem, even better foreseeing one,  and fixing it; the satisfaction and confidence of knowing that my bike is working well and that, if for any reason it were to go wrong, I could probably sort it out.

So last night should have been simple.  I needed to change the 48T chainring on the Condor for a 46T, and, while I was at it, put on a new KMC chain and a new 19 tooth sprocket (the last not strictly necessary, but it's a lovely CNC-machined one and it looked so right on the shelf at Condor).

Even with a  break for a cup of tea, it shouldn't have been more than an hour's work -- cleared up and washed just in time to check whether the new female lead in Hustle is as hot as Jaime Murray.

Two hours later, I am still staring angrily at a seized chainring bolt.  Its four colleagues are happily on the shelf, waiting to be refitted, but this one is refusing to co-operate.  I have tried every combination of allen key, screwdriver and that little Campag tool with two prongs that looks like a fondue fork.  Nothing.  I have bathed it in release fluid and WD40 and that has only made things worse. 

After briefly considering applying a blowtorch to warm it up (rejected as unlikely to be beneficial to the alloy chainring or the frame which, technically, doesn't even belong to me): I reach for the drill.  Not something I regularly use in bike maintenance, but the only thing I can think of that might work.  Twenty minutes later (the bloody thing was just revolving in its own bath of lubricant), I manage to remove the now mangled bolt and throw it in the bin. 

New ring goes on fine, although all my spare bolts are annoyingly just the wrong size, so I have to bodge a replacement.

 Just a matter now of whipping off the old cog and sticking the new one on.  Could I shift the lockring?  I suspect you know the answer to that.   Seized solid and no amount of pressure from a lockring spanner or a mallet/screwdriver combination would budge it an inch.  I tried tightening the cog fractionally, in the hope of freeing up the lockring (they have opposing threads) but that resulted in a broken Park Tool chainwhip (I thought they were indestructible) and skinned knuckles. 

Gone midnight now (teenage son's verdict on the new Hustle star incidentally, "er....she's OK"), and I'm beginning to lose hope.  Desperate times, desperate decisions - so I decide to abandon the old wheels and leave whichever over-strong ape at Condor put the lockring on to take it off again, and put the new cog on my spare track racing wheels.

Given that I'm unlikely to be taking to the track again in the near future, it's probably time that these (36 spoke Mavic Open Pro) were given a workout.  Lockring and cog come off straight away, new one goes on a treat, road tyres swopped for track tyres with relatively little difficulty.

But I'm still left with a workshop floor covered in oil spots and discarded tools, and fingers covered in cuts, blood and the sort of ground-in grease that won't come off my hands for days and days, and will raise a few eyebrows when I'm wearing a suit and tie for work next week.

And all so that I can drop my fixed gearing down from 69 to 66.  Can three inches make that much difference?  Please insert your own smutty joke here, I'm too knackered.