Deferred bike maintenance? It's gonna cost ya...

Denial is a powerful thing. 
I rode about a year of rides before worn out components forced me to replace a wheel set, a rear cassette and a chain. It was expensive, but when I look back, inevitable. 

I recently popped a spoke on the rear wheel while riding on a slight descent, the pop seemingly happening from no direct cause, like a hitting a pothole or something like that. It just popped, seemingly out of the blue. 

I was 20 miles away from home, and had to do some thinking on the fly to make it back to my bike shop and home. It all worked out, as I’ve written in a previous blog, but if I’d been more awake about the condition of my components, the breakdown most likely could have been avoided. I blame denial, in that I like to ride my bike, and if I’m riding without any problems, I just keep riding. My mistake was not looking closely occasionally at the key components to see if wear is about to blow them up. The result was my back wheel blew up, rendering the rear wheel an oval with a spoke mooring too damaged to fix.

A year earlier that spoke had another spoke that wasn’t trued correctly and popped after about two weeks of rides. It had been bent when, trying to avoid a squirrel darting in front of me, I inadvertently pushed my right heel into the rear spoke. That bent the spoke and gave the rear wheel a slight wobble. Fortunately I was able to ride the 23 miles home. The rear hub had been chewed on a few times from thrown chains, and the anchor holes to some of the spokes on the hub weren’t tight, a bit compromised. 

I’d ridden a year on the replaced spoke, so after a few months I forgot about it being a mechanical Achilles heel on the bike. I just figured it would last and last since I’d ridden on it for thousands of miles without any problem. So, of course, I never really closely inspected to see if the spoke showed any signs of weakening or imminent failing. Oops.

Meanwhile, after riding on my chain far too long, it stretched enough to wear down teeth on the rear cassette. I had been occasionally measuring the chain for stretching. But I found out later I measured it with a chain stick that wrongly showed it hadn’t stretched to far. The key for more accuracy, I learned later, was the need to use a Shimano chain measurer on a Shimano chain. Live and learn.

So, my overly stretched chain filed down the middle teeth on my cassette, to the point where the chain would skip over the middle cog whenever I tried to shift to it.

I noticed the skip, but it didn’t bother me enough to do anything about it. It was only one gear and I rode without it no problem.

But at the bike shop, when I saw the stretch in my chain when it was properly measured, and then the rounded edges on the cogs in the cassette, it was clear that I’d been more interested in riding than checking on those cassette teeth for big time wear.

So I got the wheel set replaced, the cassette replaced, the chain replace, and the drive train cleaned. Yes, it was expensive. As the bike shop mechanic said, “You got your money’s worth,” from my worn out components.

But it was a case of denial-enabled deferred maintenance. And as we all know with cars and other things mechanical, when we put off routine maintenance for too long, of course, they break down! And when, as happened to me, you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no ride home and no AAA for broken down cyclists out on the road, you have to figure out a way to get home.

So it doesn’t hurt to give a close look at all your bike components for wear and tear. That way, you may be able to pay for replacements incrementally, which is way more affordable than the way I did it. 

The key, though, is to get the bike fixed and road ready as soon as possible, high cost or not. Just pony up the dough and move on. Not good to lose perfectly good rides to a bike on the shelf, needing repairs!

Runnin’ hot, keepin’ cool

In a perfect world, when another rider or pedestrian or driver negligently almost causes a crash, we could stop the offender and firmly give them some insight into the importance of being AWAKE while sharing the road or a trail.

When some of these close calls have popped up for me, and I’ve done the necessary evasive move, I continue riding. Then after about 10 seconds I want to vent my frustration with the rider/driver/pedestrian, to tell them they unnecessarily came within a heartbeat of causing mayhem. But I’ve trained myself to let that emotional wave pass with a few deep breaths, as I pedal on. Before I know it, it’s a distant memory, and that’s better than getting into a fight with possible injuries resulting. 

I just hope my escapes of possible crashes continue. I make sure to look skyward and give thanks that I skirted a crash.

Road bike tires on a sandy patch? Beware…

Because the trail I regularly ride on is going through repaving over a short segment, the work crews had a huge detour for cyclists to keep them away from the work area. The detour put riders, mostly road cyclists, off the pavement and onto a stretch of mostly hard packed dirt, that dipped at first through some rocky path, flattened back into hard pack, then traversed a bit uphill where there was a patch of sand. Got through the sand, but as you know, on a road bike, a suddenly soft trail can dump you in a hurry. 

Turned out the detour was huge overkill, and it was shortened so than only a small patch of loose dirt has to be negotiated to get onto and off a paved detour. Much improved, but I still cringe when I ride over the soft dirt where the road bike tire tracks have sunk an inch or two. If you don’t hit it straight and fast…. Don’t wanna go there!

One of the best mountain bike rides I’ve ever done, the Flume Trail on the northeast Lake Tahoe basin, has plenty of decomposed granite, i.e. sand, on it. It’s a hugely rewarding ride, but the sand makes it very tricky in spots. Here’s a video on tips to ride well through sand with a mountain bike. I think the tips apply to a road bike also, as long as the sand isn’t too long to bog down the road bike, which can easily happen. Check this out, some good stuff…

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely, and have fun!

-- Mark Eric Larson