wrench your bike

I think you should wrench on your bike.

I don't think you need to rebuild it, or work on touchy settings like derailleur limit screws (unless you think you're up to that). In fact, you may not want to work on it at all.

(I DO want to work on it. I built the Yellow Maserati from parts, I upgrade parts from time to time, I do all my own maintenance [except when I can't, like when the Anchor House ride demanded a mechanic's statement], and I break it down to parts once a year, and lube and rebuild everything. But nobody has to go that far; I imagine few people with whom I ride do anything like that much.)

I'm no engineer; I have a liberal arts degree from a college-seminary that's out of business, and a Masters Degree in Counseling. I shouldn't know which end of a wrench is the handle. But it's my contention that if you can learn to cook for yourself, or wire up your own entertainment center, you can wrench on your bike.

Back when most frames were metal, I would have said that removing and replacing your seat tube was the most basic exercise. But in these days of carbon frames, bolt torques (how tight to twist the wrench) are unforgiving. Nonetheless. this is still a good exercise for a newbie wrench, if you've got a metal frame & seatpost:

• Wrap masking tape (or any kind of tape you have that you'll be able to remove later) around your seatpost just above where it goes into the seat tube on the frame; this way you'll know the height later.
• Loosen the bolt that holds the seatpost in. It's probably an Allen bolt, one with a hexagonal hole in the top into which a hexagonal wrench is inserted. It's usually an M5 (5mm) Allen wrench, and there's sure to be one on that multi-tool you almost certainly got as part of the "new rider package" that went along with your first bike (you know: the one with the pump, the ugly jersey, and the water bottle from the bike shop).
• Pull out the seatpost, with the saddle attached (the saddle adjustment is touchy; frequently it adjusts in all three dimensions on a single bolt from underneath - often also an M5 bolt. Don't mess with that bolt for now. Unless you want to.). The seatpost will probably have a thin layer of grease or other slithery compound on it. If it doesn't (and you have a metal frame and seatpost), your bike builder didn't love you; find a new one.  (If you have a carbon frame, or a carbon seatpost, or both, the tube may even have a layer of sticky something-or-other on it. Carbon fiber needs help that mere tighten-the-bolt physics can't supply without risking cracking the matrix - the plastic-y stuff that the carbon fibers are held in.)
• If you have a metal frame/metal seatpost, you can replace the grease on the seatpost (if there wasn't any, put some on; even some hand cream will work in a pinch).
• Put the seatpost back in the seat tube of the frame. Hold it at the level of the tape you put on before, and make sure the saddle is straight towards the handlebars (unless you know that you like it adjusted to one side or the other; I like 4° left). Tighten up the bolt.

There. You've just done some wrenching on your bike. You can do a lot of good work with not much more than that multi-tool and a pair of pliers.

A quick word on the direction of tightening bolts: Almost everywhere on Earth, the rule for tightening a bolt is "righty tighty, left loosey"; twist to the right to tighten, to the left to loosen. Two caveats:

• If you're reaching around the bottom of something, so you can't see the bolt, and it's facing up and in towards you... which way do you turn it? In this instance, I like to use a different rule: Clockwise brings the nut or bolt away from you. It may be tighter or looser: it doesn't matter. For most wrenches, clockwise = away...
• ...except for a small number of specialty items: old fittings on gas grills used to be one (now largely replaced). But two of the specialty items are on your bike. One is the left pedal, where it goes into the crank - that thread is backwards, so turning the wrench clockwise loosens the pedal. For both pedals, the rule is: Loosen towards the BACK of the bike.
• The other specialty item on your bike is the bottom bracket, to which the cranks are attached. In this case, usually, the RIGHT (drive) side is backwards-threaded, except when it's not. So, most of the time, the rule for the bottom bracket is: Loosen towards the FRONT of the bike.

But don't worry about that until you're ready to change your pedals or cranks.