Washed the bike, getting all the dust coating the lower frame tubes off and rinsing out the chain with water, working out as mush of the dust as possible which had worked its way in and had left the chain dry and sluggish. Afterwards, when the the bike had dried, I oiled the chain and tested the brakes. The rear brake made a rough metal on metal squeal, the result of all Saturday afternoon's descending, so new pads were necessary there. The gears have been malfunctioning for a while now. I've been limited to four sprockets at the rear and while clicking through the changing levers to see what could be done to improve things, there was sudden resistants and then give, followed by the gear-lever slapping forward as far as possible, to a stop. I cursed. It no longer engaged with the internal spring mechanism. Hoping I could rectify the situation, I unscrewed and removed the lever and housing-cover which is one piece. The nib on the coil-spring was out of it's usual slot and trying to push and press it back in place was fiddly, requiring an extremely steady hand. A tingle ran up my forearm holding the workings while trying to ease the end into its rightful place. But it was no good. I couldn't get it to go that last little bit. In the end I gave up and decided to wheel the bike round to the bike shop.

Manresas, the bike shop on a corner of two busy streets, is a big two storey steel-frame building, painted bright blue with big shop windows adorned with this year's Trek and Giant, mountainbikes and racingbikes, plus a popular Argentine make. On entering, the shop-assistant recognized me from the last time, when Is in buying a tyre and innertube. He was dealing with a man buying a helmet for his teenage son, but left them to try on the helmet; coming over, he greeted me jovially " Muchacho. Como andas?" We shook hands and before turning back to the customer waved over his colleague, an equally jovial short dark skinned man with a mop of black indian hair and wearing a navy workshop apron, who after I'd explained the gear-lever problem, set about the task at hand.

He picked up the bike and clamped it in a workstand on the shop floor. Fished out a philips screwdriver from his apron pocket and began unscrewing the gear-lever cover. Careful as not to drop them, he rolled two smalls screws out of his palm into the stand's tray, then lifted away the lever-cover and set it down too on the tray and eased the internal mechanism out. He contemplated it in his hand for a moment, then set it back in its place in the lever housing. I held the handlebars steady while with a small pair of pliers fished from the apron pocket, he held the spring and pushed, trying to ease the nib back round into it's slot. He sucked in and held as though he's holding his breath and gritted his teeth in a grimace, and with a perfectly steady hand pushed the nib back into place. In a deflating exhale and sigh and a face showing a winning expression, he put the lever-housing back in place and screwed the small screws home then started clicking through the gears. But the expression turned to defeat as he could only change three gears, the same as before.

The gear-levers were Shimano Deore and came on the bike new when I bought it in 2005 and had been clicked and clicked everyday since, as I've used the bike for commmuting as well as touring: suppositely they don't last forever, what does; so, I'd to make a quick decision, to buy new levers.

The man and teenage son buying the helmet had paid and were now gone and so the mechanic had the shop to himself. He plucked from a drawer a new set of Deore levers and set them on the counter. He told me they cost two hundred and forty pesos and I did a mental conversion into pounds and pence, finding they cost roughly thirty-five quid, which was okay and he wasn't going to charge for fitting them.

The bike felt like a new bike when I rode away from the bike shop. Each gear-change was clean with a possitive click onto the next sprocket. The front changer lifted the chain onto the big-outer-ring in an instant too. Before it was hit or miss, with the chain grabbing and slipping noisily on the inner side of the big-ring. I sailed along as the early evening traffic crawled along Calle Mendoza, crossing over Buenos Aires then turned right at the end of the block, turning right again and coming back across Buenos Aires, one intersection up. All was working perfectly and Is full of the optimism that a smoothly functioning bike brings.