Thursday, April 12, 2007

N - 1

yesterday afternoon i was enjoying a soul-smoothing ride when my bike began making noises i'd never heard before. there was creaking and grinding, and my pedal strokes began to get rough; and -- here's where i start to get technical and get adam excited -- i thought my bottom bracket might be seizing up, and that's like someone shoving a broomstick in your spokes. you simply can't pedal anymore.

i had a bottom bracket freeze like this before and i got stranded in eastern butt-fuck MD, where the Grand Dragons hang and immolate reliquaries on their front lawns. i ended up taking off my shoes and walking barefoot to a makeshift produce stand where an elderly gent with more generosity than teeth closed his stand to drive me back home in his pickup, where heads of cabbage rolled in the bed.

but although the grinding sound's growing more ominous i can still pedal, so it's not a BB issue. i notice, instead, that my chainstay looks more wobbly than it should, and the reason's pretty apparent: i've ripped it completely away from the seatstay:


i am that much of a beast, you see. so, i need a new road bike. e posits the ideal number of bikes is N+1, where N = the number of bikes you currently have. i'm down with this, but right now i'd settle for N, as long as all my N's function.

oh, and then? - after i crept home at 5mph, blowing out my knees on the watson mill climb because i was afraid to get out of the saddle cos i thought my rear end might explode, the dog and i bricked a run and got hailed and sleeted on for 3 miles.

sometimes i think it'd be easier to be sedentary.

6 comments:

addon said...

I remember that the chain stays run parallel to the chain, connecting the bottom bracket shell to the rear dropouts and when the rear derailleur cable is routed partially along the down tube, it is also routed along the chain stay - the chain stays provide a mount for rear disc brakes, but apart from that i don't know my arse from my elbow with bikes.

everything mechanical sucks, it is going to break down just when you don't want it to, not that it is as bad as computer stuff don't talk to me about that, we have been minus one computer for 9 weeks now (c-1, so to speak) and it is enough to make you want to spit chips.

to my untutored eye, the ... err ..thing in your picture, finn, looks broke. that's the problem and you need to get it fixed.

folk think 'cos i am an engineer i can fix anything, quite the opposite, i was a civil engineer and built manly things like dams and bridges, not prissy little bike things.

but your description did get me panting a bit ...

good onya! hooroo.

FINN said...

subh -- i just do what my dog tells me. i bet this afternoon he tells me to have some kibble and take a nap.

adam, did i ever mention that my undergrad major was mech engineering? i wanted to be an aerospace engineer like my grandfather. in my junior year, though, i wimped out and chose Yeats over Thermodynamics.

fatmammycat said...

This isn't your new bike is it?

FINN said...

no, thank god i'm not that beastly. it's taken me 4 years to tear this one apart. slikrik says it's prob still under warranty.

yer mum's a real piece... but you know that.

hugs.

fatmammycat said...

Meh, she's a cunt, but she's an amusing cunt. I'm glad it's not your new bike, I thought you didn't sound hysterical.
I"m saving the ginger goodies until tomorrow-tomorrow being Friday, meaning I can leave the beautiful image up for the weekend for all to bask in.

Anonymous said...

Lemmegetthisstraight...
You broke your FRAME. Not the brake cable, not the shifters, not a pedal clip, you broke the damn CHASSIS of your road bike.
Mmhmmm.
At least tell me it's just old aluminum...?