Today, I passed 666 miles on my bike. I’m now at 668.7 to be exact. But even before I got to the “Beast Mile” I had some misfortune.
See, yesterday biking home I was going up a hill about three miles from my house when it felt a bit like I was fighting against the brake. I got to the top of the hill and suddenly the rear tire started “ticking.” I looked down, noticed it was wobbling a bit, and hit the brake. About half a second later, there was a loud pop and I felt something hit the back of my leg (it wasn’t a hard hit–didn’t hurt or anything). By this time I had already slowed considerably, and when I came to a stop I jumped off the bike and looked at the tire.
Yup, another broken spoke. This time, the spoke wrapped itself around the rear axle too. So I had to unwind it, take the spoke off, and walk the three miles to my house.
My first bike went 2,700 miles without breaking any spokes, and on this bike I’ve broken two spokes with just 100 miles between the two (and only 670 miles of actual riding).
In any case, I got the bike in to work this morning, put in my eight hours, and then prepared to take the bike to the shop to have them look at the rear wheel…only to discover that the front tire was flat.
This makes the third tire that’s gone flat on me since June.
So I took the bike down to the bike shop and asked them to look it over and make sure A) there wasn’t any mechanical problems and B) there’s no evidence that someone is “messing with me.”
Well, it doesn’t look like anyone is doing anything. The front tire went flat because of a piece of glass that was in the tire in such a manner that it definitely was road damage. As for the spokes, we decided to try a tire with more spokes and a thicker rim to see if that might help. Unfortunately, this does mean I’ll have to shell out about $100 when the wheel comes in; but if it works it’ll be better in the long run.
The joys of owning a bike are equivalent to the joys of owning a car. Although, of course, if this sort of thing happened to a car, the labor would cost more than what I’ll be charged for the entire process on my bike. So I’ll stick with the bike. (No insurance and no gas bills, plus lower costs for repairs…off-set only by horrific weather from time to time. Yeah, I’ll make that trade.)
