Lucky Break

Yesterday, after wasting the morning making nodcast3 and surfing the web, I hurried out on the mountain bike to get in a quick ride as the snow began to fall. About a mile from the house, I headed down the trail that goes into the town forest. Less than a minute later, I cut across the trail to hop a small root (there you go heywood) and suddenly found out just how quickly you crash when your fork ends snap and the front wheel falls off. I heard the unmistakeable "twang" of breaking metal, and fell straight into the ground, taking the handlebars right up in the ribs under my left armpit. WTF? I picked up the bike, surveyed the situation, and realized what had just happened.

I picked up the dropouts, hung the front wheel onto what was left of the fork, and walked my new unicycle home. Along the way, the snow turned to sleet, and then to rain. As I trudged along, at first I thought to myself "this just ain't my day." About a quarter mile from the house, a samaratin came along in a pickup truck with North Carolina plates, and seeing my plight, offered me a ride. I told the guy no thanks, I may as well walk the rest of the way to get a bit of exercise.

When I got home, I dumped the broken bike up onto the storage rack, realized that I'd only ridden for about five minutes, and so I grabbed the cross bike and headed back out. Rolling down the street on the way to the cross field, I discovered my ribs, back, and shoulder were not feeling too good. When I tried to do some fast efforts around the field, my whole side hurt from breathing hard. Still though, glad to be out, I kept riding laps around the field in the rain. What the hell. Along the way I started thinking about how much worse this little incident could have been. I was only going around ten miles an hour when I "ate the root" and crashed onto the pine needles. My ribs took a hit, but other than that I was fine. Considering this was catastrophic failure of the front end of the bike, this could have been WAY worse. I shudder to think about the possibilities.

Truth be told, I should have seen this coming. Both dropouts do not snap simultaneously. It just wouldn't happen. About two weeks ago, I noticed my front brakes were always rubbing. I didn't think much of it, attributing the issue to stiction in the cables, which had always been cut too long, and weak return springs in the tired old V-brakes. In hindsight, obviously one dropout has been cracked for a while. I'm really glad the other one didn't decide to let go on some 40 mph banzai trip down Mountain Road, on some boneyard singletrack, or out on the road in traffic. Maybe this really was my day. Thanks for reading.