Reminds me of a book I saw once called "1001 Uses for Duct Tape".

I once had a very nice bicycle, made by a guy named Angel Rodriguez in Seattle. It had an shifting problem - it would shift perfectly when in the stand but would skip gears on the road. Nothing I did seemed to work. I took it in to Angel, and he found a hairline crack under the front dérailleur clamp, which caused the frame to spread just a little bit when there was weight on the saddle, thus messing up all of the gear settings. It's nice to have an expert to fall back on, but I still think he killed a black chicken to find that!