It’s been an irritating cycling week in some ways. These ways have mostly included having to carry a bike up three floors and down one to get out of work due to protesters blocking the usual exit, and also a two-for-one whammy on broken spokes. While the first inconvenience has no lasting repercussions the second, or rather my choice of how to fix it, might have.
As previously discussed at somewhat tedious length on this blog I have issues with my tyres, which are great while on the bike but (in technical terms) a fight effing bitch to fit. When considering my spokes, one broken at the nipple and one at the hub I realised that at least one should be sensibly replaceable without fighting the tyre. Having done this for the one broken at the hub end (therefore letting me just unscrew it from the nipple at the rim end) I decided to take a chance on the other one as well. I was fully aware that this might mean that I was just pushing the broken threaded part of the spoke into the tyre but there was a slim chance it had already worked its way out, or that it would push out and lie safely under the rim tape. Either was a long shot, and it seems more likely that I’ve forced it up with the constant risk of it finally working through the rim tape and destroying the inner tube. So far the tyre has stayed hard, but it may be deflating literally as I write this and there maybe more outpourings of annoyance when I finally do have to attack the tyre.
Irritating as all of this is I don’t imagine it’s quite as galling as getting back to your bike, which you sensibly locked to a parking meter, safe in the knowledge that noone can lift it off over the top because of the meter bit, only to find that the council have chosen that day to decapitate all the meters on the road.
A
No comments:
Post a Comment