Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I broke a spoke/it's not a joke!
Poetry! Run! (Eeeeek!)
Yes, last night Kristin and I went out on her first real bike ride. It was fun, but dark. I think she said the last time she rode a bicycle was in her teens, so it's been a few years.
Everything went quite well. No troubles with balance, and I saw marked improvement just in the few quick miles we rode. Now we have to follow up on all that to get her confidence up and work on the skills necessary to riding in "the real world."
While we were out, I heard an odd pang! noise come from my back tire, and I thought I'd rolled over a rock or something. It was accompanied by a weird jarring sensation that was completely unlike rolling over a rock, though.
After a short while, I noticed my bike was making a periodic rubbing sound as if there was something wrong with the wheel. Indeed, yesterday morning, I looked again and quickly determined that I'd broken a spoke on the rear wheel.
I pondered for a moment, and decided that this probably wasn't a deadly condition, and rode into work as I'd been planning. No trouble. Then I did some poking around on our friend the internet, which suggested that actually, that whole riding-on-busted-spoke thing was a bad idea. Hmm, I did ride in with an expectant air of "When will this thing explode on me?"
I called Free Range Cycles, my local bike shop, and asked them how difficult it would be for them to replace a spoke. The answer was swift: "We can do that, sure, just come on down." Easy.
I walked the bike down to the shop (fortunately close to work), and let them have at it. Other than removing the gears (naturally, the spoke which went pang! was on the drive-side), it looked fairly easy. Easy enough that I'm much more comfortable with the idea of doing it myself next time it happens. Hooray!
An odd thing the mechanic said: "You've got a leg up on most people -- you know how to change a flat." I looked incredulously at him. "You're kidding, right?" "Nope," he said. "It's all those fancy racer-guys in the spandex. Someone I knew was riding along and came across one of these guys who was sitting by the side of the road, bemoaning his [flat tire] fate. He had all the tools and patches, he just didn't know how to use them." Goofy. I'm sure that's not generally applicable to all spandex-clad racer-guys, but it's a funny image.
Posted at 13:33 permanent link category: /bicycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater