Blogged too soon

Mere hours after my last post, I went to take the bike out, planning to visit my brother. I hopped off of one curb. A standard sized curb, nothing out of the ordinary, it didn’t have spikes, or sharp edges, or, um, anything that could be thought to be detrimental to the common human powered bicycle. The back tire came off the curb, and immediately something was wrong. The chain was hanging languidly from the gears. Damn! I thought, the chain fell off, I’ll never get it back on!
Closer inspection revealed that something was far more amiss than the chain falling off. What I now know to be the rear derailleur, had broken completely off. Literally, the bolt holding it to the frame, snapped. I looked around, and found pieces of the bike that had fallen off and were strewn in the road.

Clearly beyond my skills to heal, I went back upstairs and called the bike shop. This is where I learned that I don’t have much of a bike vocabulary at all. “The, um, thing connected to the gears, on the back wheel, is kind of, um, not connected anymore, and...it’s that thing, that has little gears on it...you see, there’s the wheel...” Thankfully, my bike guy knows his stuff, and diagnosed it from that horrible description.
Now, I didn’t go to a large retail store to get a new bike. “I’m going to get a brand name, made to last, with good parts, I’m not going to wimp out on this,” I said to myself. I went to the nice local bike shop, which I haven’t lost faith in. I am concerned, though, that my two week old bike has a broken part.
This also happened about 10 min before the bike shop closed. So, I’m headed there tomorrow morning. I ended up walking to see my brother. It took way longer, but it was my only replacement for the bike. I felt like Pee-Wee when his bike was stolen. Everyone I passed on my walk was riding a bike. Everyone! I refrained from shouting "Showoff!!" at all of them.

First I break my car, then I break my bike…my legs feel pretty good, but maybe they should be worried.

Comments

Unknown said…
sorry to hear about your bike. i ride a lot, so i know how disappointing it must have been

better luck in the future, and many good rides to come!
PFRussell said…
take up running, then you can run a marathon with me!!!

-Pat

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