Another newbie question-shifting issues. Is it me or the bike?

I'm riding a Specialized Globe (not the City version the other one) which so far I absolutely love. I'm fairly new to actually using more than two gears so I'm not sure if what happened to me recently is user error or a bike issue. I generally ride flats in the 2/3-6 range. I was down (up?) shifting one gear and the chain moved but then it dropped again without my touching the shifter. It is now out of whack-shows 2/4 but is actually on 2/5. I road around a parking lot trying to shift through all the gears to see if it would get back on track but it just got possessed and started shifting all by itself and still didn't straighten out. Plus I got a ton of chain rub so I shifted back to the middle sprockets and gave up. I can't get to my LBS because I am out of town and working nights. What did I do to my pretty new bike?

I'm guessing that if you just got a new bike recently, the wire has stretched and needs a little re-adjusting. In which case the LBS will do it in no time flat. It's not that hard to do yourself though. Anyone know of a video clip that shows how to?

Yep, sounds very much like stretched cables. Perfectly normal thing to have happen on a new bike, albeit irritating. Will indeed take the shop two seconds to fix. If you feel confident having a go at fixing it yourself (you just have to twist an adjuster), you could try www.parktool.com for a description of how to tighten cables.

You didn't do anything wrong to your pretty new bike! Like the others said, it is most likely a stretched cable. My bike shop has a policy where they tell everyone who purchases a new bike to ride it for a couple hundred miles and then bring it back in and have the cables tightened again. No matter how much they stretch them before they set up the bike, those darn cables will stretch more as you ride it. If you can't figure how to DIY, you may need to take a trip to your bike shop and let them get it back to where it should be. Good luck!

Annie

HEy I got the same bike! Only mine has internal gears (8) I adore it!!

When I bought it the shop stressed that I needed to bring it back in after about 100 miles or a month or so so they could tighten the cables, on the brakes too. It is a free service for the life of the bike....

You probably have it too, yes?

enjoy your Globe! Show a photo???

The verdict is in! Ya'll were correct. The bike tech called it "cable slop" and reproduced it for me in the shop so I could see what was happening. A few turns of a screwdriver and it ran perfectly. Oh, we also discovered the derailer hanger was slightly bent which only added to the fun. He was able to straighten it out with the screwdriver. I don't know when the hanger got bent. I always had a tiny bit of chain rub even when it was brand new but it could have been from my overzealous securing on a bike rack for a long trip. Of course now it's fixed and the temperature has bottomed out and I don't have cold weather gear yet. Grrrrrr!