Saturday, February 9, 2008

Hmmm, must have been that last pothole.


Well, fair reader, if I didn't have a 300k ride next week I would just order a new rim for 75 bucks and pay overnight shipping and ride the recumbent for a few days and rebuild this thing if it weren't for the fact that the soonest I could get a rim here would be tuesday which means I would be riding Saturday on a virtually untested wheel. I think at this point $150 dollars will not only give me a new rim but a new hub (my current one has over 20000 miles on it so I suppose it could use replacement). I will also get another day of riding on the wheel to set the spokes in before Saturday.
Now, you may wonder how I found this little crack, was I performing a bike inspection before the big ride? Well, um er, no. I had my front fender on for the storm last week and checking the long term forecast today it looks like we may get a shower next Saturday so I thought I would see how the rear fender fit on and made a few alterations to it. During this process I noticed the rear wheel was out of round in one spot and upon further inspection noticed that one of the spokes had pulled right out of it's hole. I hit a pothole on Thursdays commute that I wondered about but as I did not have a pinch flat I figured I must have lucked out. Well, I didn't luck out. A week before the event when you aren't supposed to change anything and I blow out a rim. Well, I get to do spoke checks at every control next saturday. At least my rear wheel will be nice and clean and shiny though. Also 20000 miles on a wheel isn't shabby either. May my next $150 Mavic Open Pro wheel last just as long.

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