Breaking the 2 week rule....Again.

Well, today I did not ride due to a raspy throat. This is the week to baby myself and I do not want to get sick, or sicker. Yesterday as I sat at my desk and had a few minutes to ponder I started to worry about the concave braking surface on the front rim I felt on inspecting it after the rude discovery on the back wheel. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about catastrophic rim failure on the backside of Gates pass. Of course this kind of thinking leads to worry and a healthy helping of paranoia. So lunchtime found me getting stared at by people passing through the outside lunch area as I had my bike propped up with the front forks on a bench seat while my front wheel was on the table with the tire off. Using my pump (which of course features a straight surface one can use for reference) I laid it across the braking surface and saw that between the top and the bottom of the breaking surface there was at least a 1 mm difference. 20000 miles and 5 years of riding had in fact worn away a good portion of the rims side wall from braking. when you have 1.5 mm of wall thickness and you take away 1 mm you are starting to stray into dangerous territory and on a front wheel dangerous territory is a bad place to be as the most likely time to lose it is when it is under the heaviest use, AKA steep descents. So, I have a rim on order as I don't have another $125 to blow so with a $60 rim I got for $46 with shipping (using performance points from my rear wheel purchase) Thursday night is going to be wheel building night . Front wheels are much easier to build and it should be nice and solid for the ride on Saturday but even so I am going to check the spoke tensions at every stop. On another note I kind of feel like a hardcore cycling stud now since I have worn out a rim. Now when someone comes up and says "Dude, I just wore out a tire" with a swaggering pride in their voice, I will do my best Barney Fife and lean back and say " yep, that must have been a fine heap load of riding there son. Of course, it doesn't beat the time I wore out a rim. Nope, young pups these days, so easily impressed. A tire, now really....."