Nasty Rim Job

This year’s PMC ride is over, of course. The travelogue will be up shortly here, but it was another amazingly wonderful year. And I’m over $9,000 in fundraising now and headed for more, thanks to my perennial biggest sponsor Liam and the people from Where’s George, the community where I met Ken and Christine, whom I rode for this year.

But the real reason for this entry is this little story…

About 2/3 through day one of the PMC I noticed my bike doing a lot of clicking and creaking. It sounded kinda like my bottom bracket, although I’d had that replaced recently, and it happened whether I pedaled or not. It could have been my frame, but I couldn’t find any problems with it. It wasn’t my seatpost, because it happened whether I was seated or not.

So I pretty much ignored it. I didn’t bother getting it checked out at the end of PMC day one because it didn’t seem like anything major, and the bike was still working fine.

It hadn’t gone away on Sunday’s 70-mile ride up to Provincetown. If anything, it had gotten a little worse. But the bike held together, so I rode it. And then I rode it another 35 miles last weekend out the Lexington and back to a BBQ.

Yesterday I finally brought it into the shop. It took a while, but they finally saw the problem. Looking at the rear wheel, there was a one inch logitudinal crack in the rim where the rim met the spoke… for every single spoke in the entire wheel!

The wheel was original equiement on the bike, which is now only 22 months old and has 5275 miles on it. And for the record, I weigh only 170 pounds, which is well within the design limit. It’s the 2006 Shimano Ultegra wheelset, supposedly one of the more bulletproof wheels around. Guess not!

Needless to say, the wheel’s headed back to the manufacturer for analysis and replacement. But what amazes me is that I’d ridden about 125 miles, including half of the PMC, on a wheel that was in the process of self-destructing! Had I found those cracks, it’s unlikely I would have ridden the second day of the PMC. But thank goodness it held together long enough to get me home. Whew!