On 4/6/2021 9:09 PM, jbeattie wrote:
A few miles into my evening ride on my cable-shift Emonda -- with my wife pushing me on her ebike, I shifted to go up the next hill and snap -- immediate downshift into 34/11. Great. In the middle of a 9% grade, that turned at the top to another climb, but a short one. I tacked a bit, got home and then jumped on the Di2 disc Synapse and started over. Heavier with fenders, etc., but still a nice bike. The discs, BTW, don't drag at all. Thank Buddha for that reliable Di2.

The good thing about the latest Ultegra levers is that there is a trap door under the lever body, and you can remove one screw, take out the door and grab the broken cable and end. No more fishing it out of the lever. This is the second time in 20 years on STI that I've broken a cable. Before that I broke a friction bar-end cable in the middle of a tour. I had a spare.

Usually when you have a spare of something you never break what it's the
spare for. On tours I'd have a fold-up spare tire, rim strips or tape,
shift cables, brake cables, spokes, and all the necessary tools. I used
them on other people's bikes most often. Back in the olden days even
small towns had a hardware store with some bike parts and you could fix
most anything good enough to keep going. I remember "Coast to Coast"
hardware stores along the Oregon coast. Perhaps because of the large
numbers of bike tourers they had a good selection of bike stuff.

Near my house, the old Long's drug store even sold Park Tools, along
with various bike parts including cables, chains, brake calipers, brake
pads, tires, tubes, and dynamo lights; when CVS took over that was the
end of that. Payless Drugs also had a lot of stuff until RiteAid bought
and wrecked them.