Ride Entry – 31st May 2009
Bike: Chameleon
Distance: 12 miles
Well first off what a shitty, crappy, boring weekend. I did absolutely 100% of nothing, and the weather was great. Missed pretty much all of it. Just nothing seemed to flow together to make anything nice happen.
Ride then. Read this and it pretty much describes how my entire weekend panned out. Set off nice and early for a full on ride across lots of moors, planned to do 60-70 miles of seriously hard trecking and get back completely goosed. About 6 miles out I was caning it down ‘The Mechanical’, I should know better because there’s a reason this trail is called this but it’s so much fun. About half way down there’s this loud metallic bang and my back brake starts scraping like mad. I roll to the bottom and get off for a look. One of the caliper bolts has snapped in half!!!???? As a result the caliper is twisting slightly and permanently rubbing. I try to fix it but no joy so I take it off, bolt it onto one of my v-brake mounts to keep it still and ride home. (That’s mechanical number 1 – keep counting)
No matter, it’s still early so I can just grab another bike. Zip home, grab the road bike, charge back out. I get a whole half mile this time when my right pedal starts making this horrible grinding noise. Feels like the bearings have popped out or cracked. (That’s mechanical number 2).
Shoot home, swap the pedal out, shoot back out again, no doubt watched by a series of bemused (or more bemused than they normally are by my cycling activities) neighbours. I get oooh, to the top of our road this time. Lean on the pedals to cross the road and CHING, mechanical number 3 hits home! Nothing actually appears to be broken but that was a loud noise and so something clearly is. I roll along for a bit looking down to see what I’ve snapped but it all looks ok, stand on the pedals and this rythmic grind starts every couple of turns or so. Takes me a while to find this one but I’ve snapped one of the chain plates and it’s sticking out and scraping as it goes through the mechs.
Clearly someone is trying to tell me something so I limp back down our road and call it a day.
All fixed now but I simply can’t be arsed going out for an evening ride. Might go out to take some pictures or something though.
diary, rides, things that blow | admin | 
May 31, 2009 5:09 pm
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