General Jackassery

NOOOOOOOOO, I didn’t crash, wreck, get hit, hit something, threaten to not wear my helmet or otherwise cause myself damage so you can stop freaking out! What I did do is pop a spoke on my 3 day old bicycle.

See, I got this hair brained idea that I wanted to start riding my bike to work. I’m cheap and slightly crazy these days so the idea of riding to work gives me a cheaper fuel bill, exercise and good dose of adrenalin when some stupid ass redneck decides to honk his horn and yell “GET OFF THE ROAD” while I’m out riding at 5:00 A.M. But I digress. I decided that I wanted to play hockey this morning as has been a habit of mine for several years now and I still wanted to ride to work. So, what the heck, I get up at 3:45 get on the bike at 4:10 and head to the Ice Complex.

Unbeknownst to me, I was truckin’ this morning. Apparently the idea of riding in the dark was enough to give me a little adrenalin boost, and I didn’t really need any cars. I rode the 19 miles from my house to the Ice Complex in 1 hour and 10 minutes. Here’s where the bad luck comes in. I rode the for 9 miles at what must have been about Mach 1 because at 9 miles a spoke on my front well pulled out of the rim. I have the grommet, the spoke and everything that goes with it, but it’s not in the wheel. Anyway, the loss of one spoke on a normal rim with 32 spokes is not so bad, but when you’re talking high tension spokes and only 20 of them the loss of one is pretty significant. It caused the front rim to be severely warped.

This in turn caused me to have to open my front brakes which all but eliminated their use in stopping my big ass if I was going very fast. Since I was 9 miles from home and only 3 miles from work, and it was 4:30-ish in the morning I decided to press on, at what felt like an incredibly slow pace. When I got close to work I decided that the wheel had held together this long, it’s only 5 or 6 more miles to the Ice Complex, and so I went for it. So, I made it to the Ice Complex in an hour and 10 minutes and I stopped for 3 or 4 minutes to get the spoke out of the way, since it was banging around and hitting my front forks. By the time I got close to the Ice Complex I was back up close to normal speed but still being VERY careful! Listening for any kind of creaks and moans that would indicate the rim was going to fold on me. It didn’t!

So, I played hockey for an hour and a half. I scored two goals, pretty goals, NHL kind of goals. I took a knuckling, bouncing pass, knocked it down and settled it on my stick and then roofed the puck over a sprawling goalie. Then the same shift I got the puck and headed up Ice with it. I hit another forward with a pass at the blue-line and made a dash for the net. He sent a pretty pass through the legs of the defenseman, right on the tape of my stick. I was in all alone behind the “D”; I took the puck to my forehand and the last second cut across the net, put the puck to my back-hand and buried the puck in the net, this time under the sprawling goalie. Anyway, it was enough to make the game really fun and I wasn’t that tired even after riding 19 miles! So, I got undressed and said heck with it I’m going to ride to work. (I’d thought about asking someone to drive me over to work, but since the wheel held for ten miles and I was going to retrace my steps over roads I’d already ridden I felt secure that I could make it the 6 miles back to work.)

Amazingly enough I was at work on time and I only left the Ice Complex about 10 minutes earlier than I normally do. Granted I didn’t pull through the drive through at McDonalds. It’s amazing the kind of weight you can drop when you DON’T eat there for breakfast every morning!

Anyway, I have to take the bike down to the shop this afternoon and get them to fix it. Shouldn’t be any problem and I shouldn’t have to pay since the bike is 3 days old and only has about 50 miles on it.

Okay so there you go. Just a little bit of bad luck with bikes lately. I wish I could afford to buy a new set of Rolf wheels like I had on my old bike. They have to be the best out there, but I guess you get what you pay for and at $800 for the set that I want; I’d have to pay an awful lot!

That’s it from here.

Todder, out!