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This Bike Will Self-Destruct In ...
Dec. 26th, 2015 08:32 pmYesterday my brother Jason was kind enough to give K. and me a ride home from San Martin, and among many other discussions I mentioned that the next time my bike went in for serious repairs, it'd probably be time to just replace it instead.
Well ...
Tonight I went out for a planned ~25 mile bike ride, to try and offset two days of big meals and tasty candies. I went out to Hilltop Mall, had a big meal and some candy (hmmm...), did some writing in their big central court yard, then headed home.
On San Pablo Dam Road, just before I turned into a quieter street, a plastic bag blew into my bike. No biggie, eh? Then my rear wheel ground to a sudden halt. (I was pretty thankful I wasn't moving at speed.) The plastic bag had wrapped itself into and around my derailleur and then when it had gotten sucked into the gears, it literally ripped the derailleur apart. Bent up the chain too.
December is apparently crazy bike damage week, since last year, a few weeks earlier, I got assaulted by a runaway skate board. This time it was all the more bizarre, because a plastic bag literally proved itself stronger than my derailleur.
My bike was so horribly maimed that it took me 15 minutes (and a ton of grease on my hands) to get it to the point where I could push it without the derailed derailleur grinding into the tires, frame, gear shaft, or something else. Then it was a 2.5 mile walk to the El Cerrito Del Norte BART Station, and I was home free from there.
Believe it or not, The Missing Link is closed for a week, so it was off to Mike's Bikes, where they estimated repair of chain + derailleur at $100, which sounds reasonable, but more than I think the bike is worth at this point. It's 7 years old, with just shy of 12,000 miles on it. There was a cluster of repairs about 18 months ago, and I'd already decided that the time has come to stop rather than clustering repairs again.
So I had them show me new bikes for a bit, but it was too late to really come to a decision on one. So, I'll probably be back on Monday to decide on a new bike. I've got some notes on what they were suggesting, to see if I like what I read about them on line. (If not, I might have to find another bike shop that actually is open over the Christmas holidays.)
So. Sigh. A frustrating day.
Well ...
Tonight I went out for a planned ~25 mile bike ride, to try and offset two days of big meals and tasty candies. I went out to Hilltop Mall, had a big meal and some candy (hmmm...), did some writing in their big central court yard, then headed home.
On San Pablo Dam Road, just before I turned into a quieter street, a plastic bag blew into my bike. No biggie, eh? Then my rear wheel ground to a sudden halt. (I was pretty thankful I wasn't moving at speed.) The plastic bag had wrapped itself into and around my derailleur and then when it had gotten sucked into the gears, it literally ripped the derailleur apart. Bent up the chain too.
December is apparently crazy bike damage week, since last year, a few weeks earlier, I got assaulted by a runaway skate board. This time it was all the more bizarre, because a plastic bag literally proved itself stronger than my derailleur.
My bike was so horribly maimed that it took me 15 minutes (and a ton of grease on my hands) to get it to the point where I could push it without the derailed derailleur grinding into the tires, frame, gear shaft, or something else. Then it was a 2.5 mile walk to the El Cerrito Del Norte BART Station, and I was home free from there.
Believe it or not, The Missing Link is closed for a week, so it was off to Mike's Bikes, where they estimated repair of chain + derailleur at $100, which sounds reasonable, but more than I think the bike is worth at this point. It's 7 years old, with just shy of 12,000 miles on it. There was a cluster of repairs about 18 months ago, and I'd already decided that the time has come to stop rather than clustering repairs again.
So I had them show me new bikes for a bit, but it was too late to really come to a decision on one. So, I'll probably be back on Monday to decide on a new bike. I've got some notes on what they were suggesting, to see if I like what I read about them on line. (If not, I might have to find another bike shop that actually is open over the Christmas holidays.)
So. Sigh. A frustrating day.