After Tuesday's wipeout, I finally had a chance to survey the damage to the bike. Not much damage -- brake lever out of place, scuffs on the paint job in various places and, surprise, a broken rear spoke. I have broken 4 spokes in two weeks and it's finally come to the point where I need to something. Something drastic.
(About now, this is where Mrs. Yam starts to shake her head; she knows full well what's coming up -- her husband is going to fly off on some expensive tangent and the budget will be shot to hell.)
"If I'm going to spend all that time breaking spokes, I should just bloody get a truing stand and put 'em in myself," I snort. "This is getting expensive and I can do this, I shouldn't have to keep running to the bike shop for this."
Mrs Yam patiently nods.
"Let's go to REI and get a truing stand and I'll fix this myself"
Sigh, says Mrs. Yam.
$240 dollars later (well, we've started camping and we needed some stuff), I have a stand. So, while the coals for dinner were getting started, I put in the new spoke and trued the wheel. That felt good. I'm getting all ambitious and now pondering the chance of building a new rear wheel. I'll have to get Mrs. Yam's road bike working before I go there. I don't need any more disapproving glances from me darlin' bride for a while. And then there's the Gitane that needs to be rebuilt (or at least fixed up) and then I need to get my buddy's Raleigh from his house and turn that into a one-speed...
(About now, this is where Mrs. Yam starts to shake her head; she knows full well what's coming up -- her husband is going to fly off on some expensive tangent and the budget will be shot to hell.)
"If I'm going to spend all that time breaking spokes, I should just bloody get a truing stand and put 'em in myself," I snort. "This is getting expensive and I can do this, I shouldn't have to keep running to the bike shop for this."
Mrs Yam patiently nods.
"Let's go to REI and get a truing stand and I'll fix this myself"
Sigh, says Mrs. Yam.
$240 dollars later (well, we've started camping and we needed some stuff), I have a stand. So, while the coals for dinner were getting started, I put in the new spoke and trued the wheel. That felt good. I'm getting all ambitious and now pondering the chance of building a new rear wheel. I'll have to get Mrs. Yam's road bike working before I go there. I don't need any more disapproving glances from me darlin' bride for a while. And then there's the Gitane that needs to be rebuilt (or at least fixed up) and then I need to get my buddy's Raleigh from his house and turn that into a one-speed...
3 comments:
what does mean?
there's a blank in your comment, i don't know what you are asking about
ah, a blank in your comments. you wanted to know about the nbsp thingies in the post -- that is an artifact of the software i'm using to post these. i'll have to see if i can fix it
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