Friday, December 28, 2007

Finesse

This is not something I possess out on the trail whilst riding my bike. I often bang my way down a trail as though I am a four year old banging on the flippers of a pinball machine. This has lead to the untimely death of most of my frames.

I often jinx myself but it normally isn’t on the same day. Since things have been relatively slow at work I typed out the “Reflection” post yesterday and I said:

It has been over 15 months now that I have been solely riding a rigid single speed bike in the mountains and I haven’t died or broken the bike yet.

Well yesterday after I took Shade out for a dog loop. David George and I started a loop when a ½ mile into the ride I said “Man that noise coming from my headset is awful, it sounds like a broken frame.” After another ½ mile I felt the frame sag and there she went, down for the count. The down tube broke in half very close to the steer tube but not on the welds.

I called my boy in blue and I will have the new Husker Blue Karate Monkey in my hands in no time at all. I have become indifferent to breaking frames. In all reality, every bike that is ridden hard enough for long enough will fail at some point. In Pisgah, this timeline is shortened exponentially.

So look for some hiking reports in the near future as it will be a week or more before the bike is built and ready.

Here is my current busted list:

4 Sugar 292 Gary Fisher 29’ers
1 Cake Gary Fisher
1 Karate Monkey – Steel

Late Edit:

Since I posted this and sent an email, I have had three offers for bikes to borrow. My friends are fantastic!! However, I will take non of them up on the offer. I am just not into borrowing bikes. More because I am picky than anything else but thank to all of you who offered help!! I really do appreciate it.

Peace

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rest in Peace Lil Monkey! I feel your pain, as a breaker of many bikes, i've learned not to become attached to any bike on an emotional level. ;) Husker Blue Huh ?Sweet! i have a mary bar for you!

brado

Anonymous said...

Hey Tomato,
Bill here aka Big Worm from Dicky'd blog. I have a picture for you could you please send me your email to whereonearthisbill@gmail.com

Thanks
`Bill

Anonymous said...

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez tomato.
WTF?
Breaking your monkey?

No one breaks a monkey and lives to tell about it. Beware.

The Evil MGE! said...

Dude, WTF, steel breaks? There ain't no way that Monkey could of been forged by a skilled japenese blacksmith, folded a thousand times upon itself and gone through a heat cool process that made it inconcievably stronger then any blade it met against. Wait a minute, we were talking about a bike right?

Anonymous said...

You really need to consider going Ti! Titanium doesn't corrode like steel, and that toxic sweat of yours turned that steel monkey into a rustbucket!

Happy New Year, see ya soon!

brado

cornfed said...

It might not corrode but it snaps too. My Ti Litespeed cracked on the weld where the downtube meets the headtube. I got the 1x1 as a fast, hopefully unbreakable, replacement. You've wrought fear into my briefly peaceful world. The worrying now begins.

Husker Blue looks sweet.

-thad