Archive for May 6, 2008
Introducing the Wanderlust riders, and bike irony
Bike irony and the riders are unrelated, but entertaining. As we approach the official launch of Wanderlust 2008, the other riders will be making their debut blog postings. From here on out, wanderlustwithrhonda.com will be our group blog and the only place to go for all the news about our adventures. Stay tuned for introductory posts from my fellow riders – Rhonda is pretty excited about all her new friends.
On to the bike irony, after which I really have to do some serious final paper writing. Hop into my wayback
machine for a trip down memory lane, to my bike trip down the California coast to San Luis Obispo. I’d had four lovely days down Highway One with my friend Justin, and we’d parted ways just north of Big Sur so he could turn inland while I continued South. I camped with some friendly and apparently insomniac raccoons in a lovely little campsite on my last night before arriving and was feeling quite pleased with how well the ride was going so far. Well, as I rode down a hill south of Cambria my back wheel started tinkling, as if it had suddenly turned into a music box and/or picked up some little bells. Wouldn’t that’ve been lovely. Instead, one of my spokes had broken and was dangling there in two sad, broken pieces.
The thing about wheels, and especially wheels that you’re carrying 30 pounds of camping gear on, is that it’s actually relatively important to have all your spokes intact. Weight distribution and some such nonsense. I got out my spoke wrench and tightened the spokes around the broken one, hoping to take up the slack and prevent more spoke breakage. Unfortunately, not much later I suddenly slowed dramatically, as if I was braking. Which I wasn’t. One of the spokes next to the broken spoke had caved under the pressure (I know, weak), which pulled the wheel so off center that it rubbed against my bike frame on every revolution.
This meant that not only did I have to walk to the next town (which luckily was only a mile or two away), I had to push against my brake the whole time, because the wheel collided with the brake pad on every revolution. Because the broken spokes were on the drive side of the back wheel, where the cassette is, I couldn’t have replaced them even if I’d had extra spokes, because I didn’t have the right tools.
This bike irony is taking a lot longer to set up than I anticipated when I started writing. Bear with me. We’re almost there.
Fast forward to Wanderlust 1. Justin built me new wheels for the occasion (thanks Justin!), but I’d brought extra spokes just in case. I also bought: a cassette tool, an adjustable wrench, and a chain whip. A chain whip is a special tool that allows you to take off your cassette in order to replace drive side spokes. It is also really, really heavy.
I debated before I left about whether or not I needed to bring it – I mean, I was bringing a pan flute, so it wasn’t as if I was counting ounces, but I also knew that it was going to be annoying to carry this really heavy tool around if I didn’t end up needing it. So I promised myself that if I made it through the trip without breaking any spokes, I’d throw it into the San Francisco Bay as a ceremonial gesture. Well, it turns out that Justin is really good at building wheels, so I didn’t break a single spoke throughout the 4,600 miles. (or since then, for that matter). I arrived safely to San Francisco, the chain whip went into the Bay, and a good time was had by all.
Fast forward to today. I’ve been getting Rhonda all gussied up for our trip this summer, which of course means that every time I fix one thing I find three other things that need to be repaired or replaced. For instance, I just replaced my chain, but noticed that it skips when I pedal. Some investigation revealed that I’d managed to totally destroy my sprockets (the little teeth on the gears) by riding on a worn out chain. I stopped by the bike shop and picked up a new cassette with non-dysfunctional sprockets, figuring I’d go home, pop off the old cassette, pop on the new one, and everything would be golden.
You see where this is going, don’t you?
I got home, went to my bike tool box…and remembered that the ONE tool that I absolutely, positively needed in order to change my cassette was swimming with the Chinese mitten crabs and potentially some ballot boxes on the bottom of the San Francisco Bay.
Moral of the story, kids, is even if your spokes don’t break, don’t throw your chain whip into the bay.
If those aren’t words to live by, I don’t know what is.
