Who needs a service after a 4 month road trip?

Well, all my gear more or less including me. And while "me" is subject for doctors I have to be the doctor of my gear, though I must put a mess in order at the same time after such a long absence from home.

First of all, my laptop needs a monitor cable. I have turned the world upside down to find one with the exact same code but failed. If you can find me one (part number: DD0XKGLC001) I'll be thankful forever:

In this hectic time trying to meet my shitload of commitments I realise that I have forgotten the lock of the cover of my bike down on the sidewalk, while I am at the supermarket. When I return from shopping it's nowhere to be found. Though few things can impress me when it comes to mankind I still wonder how come a fuckhead stole a lock without even knowing the code. As I take the elevator up to my penthouse I see this on my door:

What an act of kindness! A neighbour of mine show the scene and put it on my door's handle as he wasn't close enough to stop me. There's still nice people around right?

Issues to fix seem to have no end. The heatwave in Athens was so crazy while I was away (experiencing a super cold summer in contrary) that the valves of my car who was standing exposed to the merciless sun for all this time became brittle and the tires lost pressure. All 4 of them. Which means no way to drive the car to the tire shop, gotta take off each tire a time and bring it to the shop. How nice eh? Especially while the summer is still hot. So...yep...time to get the tools to work:

And the right leverage to make things way much easier. I have the best fit for this job:

It's longer than it looks and in this case size absolutely matters 🙂 I guess I was looking miserably sweaty bringing tires back and forth so a guy who just happened to park in front of me asked me if I need any help though I've never seen him in my life before. Act of kindness number two though I was almost done anyway so gratefully I denied.

In this mess I also have to cook. Fancy a slice of pizza?

Pizza break was nice but servicing has no end. Now it's my guitar's turn. During this long trip of mine I grabbed the chance to buy this set of locking keys as the shipping cost for Greece was kinda crazy to order it online from home. Can't wait to put these beauties on:

Old strings out first:

Given the chance of having the strings out of my way I also decide to take the pick guard off in order to do some mods on the electrics too - the most convenient way to keep the screws is the guitar pickups themselves:

My guitar has active pickups which means that it needs a battery to work so my intention is to move the on off switch where this black bump sticker is:

Here's the switch and the battery:

Time to disconnect:

And now the battery can cry alone:

Sticker's out:

Sticker's glue is out too:

And the switch just found it's new place:

Time to connect:

I love using heat shrink tubes to isolate cables so that's what I did to the battery too:

In both cases you can see that I've run out of the black ones but nobody sees them where they are anyway so no biggie.

Back to the new locking keys now:

Time to take the old ones out:

And their sleeves:

I wanted to leave them one but they are slightly different compared to the new ones so they don't fit.

Ladies and gents, put your hands together for my new keys:

With strings on:

The string locking mechanism they have makes changing strings sooo easy and way much easier than the old ones so I gladly put the latter in the box of the former ones,

and enjoy the new ones:

However, I don't like the way the guitar feels that much so I decide to adjust the neck. That means take off the strings again in order to unscrew the neck:

Now I have access to the truss rod screw:

As you can see my neck still has its birthday written with pencil after all these decades:

She deserves a new set of strings too so I buy her my most favourite ones:

In case you wonder why they are named "bullets" it has to do with the shape of the string end:

It's not made like this for gun lovers, it is supposed to increase the contact surface of the string with the guitar and this way increase the sustain. Not sure the latter has increased but the tone these strings have is the best I've ever got from all the strings I've tried over the years.

Who's next to service? Last but not least, my iron horse. Do you remember me mentioning my chain's noise over my last posts? Well, time for a new one so I got this set:

First the old one has to go out and this requires some violence:

As you can see my dear mechanic in action, the above image is the equivalent of a dentist for motorcycles. The new set is so much more quieter than the old one that my bike sounds and feels like brand new now with it on:

Seriously, compared to the new set I think the old one was stealing a couple of horses from the engine. If you wonder why it doesn't look gold like in the box's cover that's only because they charge more for the "gold" colour. What's the point in paying more for the colour of something that will always be dirty since you have to lubricate it all the time? To me none.

So that's part of the post trip "chaos" I try to put in order cause not all of it is presentable, I owe you an analysis on that longest trip of mine but give me some time cause it's a little tough to do so right now.

Thanks for reading! See you soon!