33. WHAT THE **** IS A CHAIN DEVICE?

I know, I know. Sounds a bit weird and despite all the magazines and forums and websites telling me otherwise I was initially dubious about the need for me to get one of these. But apparently, if you’re going to have a single chain ring up front then you need to get one of these..

 ...attached to your bike or as soon as you hit a bump your chain will fly off the ring, club you repeatedly about the head, empty out your bank accounts and strangle your entire family. That seemed like a bad thing so...yeah. On a normal bike with more than one ring and a front derailleur and everything the chain is kept from wreaking this bloody havoc by the derailleur cage as seen here...

That's the derailleur sitting up above the round thing with lots of teeth on it. Really should clean my bike more often...

Once you get rid of that (the derailleur I mean) you need something else to guide the chain onto and off the chainring. So – chainguide. Which, when attached, will look something like this...

Except mine is black (see above). There's a little wheel in the white thing down the bottom that helps the chain run around without hassles..

 It’s just pictures galore today. There are other options of course. Some are bigger and have bashplates for ‘soaking up the hits’ which sounds quite worrying if you ask me. Some are smaller. A company call SRAM (pronounced um, SRAM) which is quite the major player in the bicycle world, has recently released a dedicated 1x11 drivechain (as in 1 ring up front and 11 out back which of course means all the cycling press get to make absolutely HILARIOUS Spinal Tap references all over the place) that claims not to need a chain guide at all, but it costs an absolute SHITload more than I am currently willing to fork out.

And if, once I get it all going, it seems to me that I don't need a top and bottom guide, I can just remove the bottom bit. Which is a preferable option to buying a top guide only and finding out I really needed the whole shebang.  

Plus. I've never been accused of not overengineering the hell out of everything. Check out our 70 ton solid hardwood cubbyhouse if you have any doubt.

Next: Pedals: More complicated than you would think....