It's The Amazing Magic Chain!

With Bob's permission I'm pasting his email to the Renegades following yesterday's ride.

"We had a fabulous ride on Sunday! We started out with three of us, Ori, Greg and I, at Lakeville and Northern. We picked up Billy early on the service road and did the usual Sunnyside Extension into West Hills via Sweet Hollow Road. Greg had teenage girls to transport back to the city by 11am, so he headed home at Stillwell after that. The three of us continued into Huntington Harbor, but then added Oyster Bay up Berry Hill to the 7 11 in Syosset. On the way home through the campus Billy and Ori stopped to fix Billy's front derailleur and I doubled back to meet up with them. Then back to Great Neck. I finished with 68 miles."

"A bit chilly at 8am, but really nice sunny clear day with very little wind. A great way to end the long weekend."

"Hope everybody else had a great holiday."

In terms of Billy's front derailleur issues, the strangest thing happened. Riding through the campus, as Bob mentioned, Billy dropped his chain while shifting to the small ring. Nothing out of the ordinary there. I kept riding but kept looking back to make sure he stayed with us. I kept slowing down and a minuted or two into it he still failed to show up. I decided to go back to see what the issue was. Turns out that his chain had inexplicably come out of the front derailleur cage. It sounds impossible, but there it was. The derailleur cage was completely intact and operational, yet the chain was outside of it. It must be a Houdini chain. We simply couldn't figure out how it came out and how to get it back in, except by opening the rear of the cage. It was a simple matter of removing the bolt and pulling out the end bracket. But once the chain was back on we just couldn't manage to put the bolt back in place with the tools we have, so we put away all the loose parts and Billy finished the ride in his small ring without any problem.