My chain was out of line

I bought the chain alignment tool mentioned by Beemerphile, and finally got round to looking at my chain. And it was way out of alignment. The thing is, - this is the first time I have needed to adjust my chain since new. It was on or maybe slightly over the 40mm advocated in the book and the bike has done 6000 miles without needing adjustment so I was quite impressed. So before adjusting I put the alignment tool on and the rod pointed way off. It took a bit of messing about to get both the chain slack and alignment right - good tip in the other post to use a wooden handle to pull the spindle forwards.

I have had 3 occasions when the bike has behaved very oddly and given me a fright. They were all when I was slowing down for a bend or a corner. I have this notion that the slack chain and the out of alignment, combined with me swinging the bike, has caused the chain to ride up momentarily on the sprocket, thereby giving a lurch as it tensioned the chain before dropping back into line.

Mike