A long time ago, in a prior blogging incarnation, I wrote a post about one of the unspoken rules of the road: specifically, the one that can be summed up, “If you ride unprepared, you will encounter mechanical (and other types of) failure in proportion to your unpreparedness.”
Most often, the failure in question will be a flat (the most common mechanical failure in cycling, period). This is because flats have the highest ride-stoppage to injury ratio.
It’s not that our bikes want to hurt us (though walking a mile downhill in bike cleats can be less than comfortable). It’s just that they want to remind us of the importance of being prepared, you see.
Thus an exploding wheel, while it’s a very good way to bring your ride to a rapid end, is an uncommon occurrence — the likelihood of injury is too high. Bikes don’t want to hurt us; they realize that if they do, they’ll wind up stuck in the garage contemplating their Presta valves for weeks on end while we heal.
I’m sure you can see where this is going.
On Saturday, I finally took the road bike out for a spin after months on the mighty Moto. I decided not to transfer my seat bag to Hg — it seemed like overkill for what was going to be maybe an hour in saddle during which I would never be more than three or four miles from the house.
Hg felt great. I had forgotten how nigh-symbiotic my relationship with that bike is: the finest piece of machinery I’ve ever owned, built just for me and the way I ride by my former boss at the shop, dialed in a little at a time over the course of almost a year — not to mention light, stiff, and fast.
Hg is a race bike and handles like a race bike. The effect is one of telepathy: you think about going in a given direction, and the bike goes before you realize you’ve asked it to turn.
No matter what I’m riding, when I’m feeling a little shaky about a sharp turn, I repeat the following mantra: The bike goes where the eyes go. The bike goes where the eyes go. Hg also goes where the eyes go — fast. The Mighty Moto makes graceful, swooping turns. Hg turns on a dime and gives you change.
I’ve said before that Hg is a better bike than I deserve; or, at least, a bike that can put out more performance than I could possibly exhaust at this juncture. I still think that’s true, but it was amazing to hop on my road monster and find myself singing along in the big gears after nearly three months on the ‘cross bike, which is six pounds heavier unloaded (during the school year, I ride loaded a lot more than un-) and definitely built with an eye towards stability more than sheer speed.
I figured ten weeks riding compact would’ve made the standard road double feel a little tall, but they didn’t. They felt perfect — though when I carved around the corner onto Southern Parkway, I still found myself fighting a pretty stiff headwind and finally gave in and clicked back to the small ring.
Suffice it to say that I was feeling pretty awesome. I rolled up the climb in Iroquois Park at a pretty good clip, waved to a bunch of walkers and joggers and dogs and a couple other cyclists, circumnavigated the overlook (slowly, because there were a bunch of folks on foot up there and you can’t see around it; I didn’t want to hit someone). I clicked back over to the big ring and made a pretty whippy circuit around Toppill Road (okay, so I was just a little chicken on the descent with the sharp corner at the bottom — better next time, as I told myself).
On my return trip, back on Upill Road, I picked up speed on the opening leg of the descent and prepared for the sharp left at the first scenic parking destination — and just as I was sailing into that turn, I heard a pop followed by a hiss.
Every cyclist knows that sound; we all dread it. Because I was in the apex of a sharp turn, I figured I’d go down — but a split second later I’d realized that the preparations I’d made for that turn (tucked and stable with my weight in the right drop and pedal) had kept us rubber-side down. I winced at the thought of riding my rim over the rough pavement, straightened out, braked, and leapt off at the first opportunity.
It didn’t take long to establish the obvious: I’d blown my rear tire — and how. It was flat.
Ages ago, when I was a Goth, we used to trade Goth jokes and laugh at them. One of my favorites went like this: “I’m so Goth I’ve invented a new color. I call it ‘black-black.’” I don’t know why it struck me as so very hilarious (I blame adolescence, with its underdeveloped forebrain capacities), but it did.
Well, anyway, my rear tire wasn’t just flat, it was ‘flat-flat.’ And, of course, I had no patch kit, no spare tube, no frame pump — not even a CO2 cartridge.
I was about three miles from home, so I caved and called DD. I might have accepted the offer of aid from a passing cyclist, but I was willing to call it a day at that point. DD cheerfully agreed to come get me, so I walked the rest of the way down that long, sweet descent, Hg rolling placidly along beside me.
Anyway, the moral of the story is: leave your patch kit behind at your own peril — but if you do, bring your phone.
This week will be a taper week (sort of), since Timothy Stephen and I are doing the Sub 9 Death March on Saturday. The Mighty Moto will get its first full tune-up and (assuming my RD will handle it) a borrowed wheelset with a proper granny gear in the cassette. The Death March is, from what I grasp, aptly named, and I’m not above snagging any advantage within reach. I’ve had some opportunity to ride the Moto off road, and I’m pleased with how it handles.
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| From MyBikes |
I’m cautiously excited about the Death March. It looks like fun. Insane, punishing fun of the kind that makes one question one’s sanity, but fun nonetheless.
That said, things will probably be quiet around here ’til after the race — this week will be spent registering for next semester and doing race prep.
