Tripping Over The Little Things

It always seems to me that attention to detail is crucial. Yet, my attention is a precious and surprisingly limited resource. So every now and then (and more often than I care to admit) my attention is not on the details of the task at hand but rather somewhere else: On the awesome King Floyd track "Groove Me" from the Atlantic R&B box set I got for x-mas; Or my day job; Or my pernicious injuries that keep me off the bike (thankfully it's the off-season); Or even the anticipation of some quality time with my sweet loving wife.

All that stuff shifts my attention around from the matters at hand like a business of ferrets running through my head, so that I suddenly find myself looking at this:

Many of you may already recognize this nasty little bit of twisted aluminum. 

What's that? 

You don't? 

Here's a hint:

That's what happens when you start trying to align your brake caliper with your new 200mm rotor using your swanky new 6061 T6511 Aluminum post mount adaptor and you take your eyes off the ball because one of those pesky mental ferrets comes calling.

See, at first everything looks great. The mounting bolt is plenty long:

And it mates up the post mount adaptor just dandy:

But after 30 minutes of fucking around, truing the rotor in the stand and generally getting irritated you decide to add those lovely hemispherical washers to the mix because the damn thing won't stop rubbing:

But you fail to observe (well I suspect at this point you didn't fail to observe) that the bolt is coming up short. Because even though it looks just dandy assembled:

Torquing things up leaves the bolt, well, oddly not so tight. In fact a careful tug with the fingers and out comes the little fucker, surrounded with the guts of your precious post mount adaptor:

Leaving your little piece of awesome bike jewelry eviscerated:

It should look a lot more look like this:

That hemispherical washer seemed like a great idea, but it soaked up a few too many threads. And in one of those mystical moments once removed it seems to have been one hell of a lot thicker than it appeared when it was in the stack:

Luckily for the me I had an extra post mount handy and I'm already back in business.

Remember people: 

Your attention is a limited resource. 

You only have so much of it to give in this life. 

Use it wisely.

The HFC.