Taco Meat

[ornoth_cycling]

So Friday I got up and made to bike in to work, and I had one of those experiences: I walked my bike three feet down the hallway of my apartment, and it suddenly stopped.

Let me explain: the reason why it stopped was because the rear wheel was rubbing against the brake pad. The reason why it was rubbing was because the wheel was out of true. It was out of true because the rim was bent. And the rim was bent because, apparently, I’d hit a pothole on that lovely 25-mile ride I took on Xmas day.

And before you ask, yes, this is the same Shimano Ultegra rear wheel I replaced just three months and five hundred miles ago, after the Shimano Ultegra wheel that originally came with the bike developed numerous cracks in it.

Determining the esteem that I now hold for Shimano wheels has been left as an exercise for the reader.

The good news is that my LBS was able to re-tension the spokes sufficiently to make the thing rideable, even though the wheel wobbles like a soggy flour tortilla in a steam room. The bad news is that the wheel’s integrity is so compromised that there’s a high likelihood that it’ll ’splode on the road the next time I hit a good pothole.

It’s a good thing the roads in Massachusetts are always so well cared for.

So that means come spring I’ll probably be in the market for a new rear wheel: an extremely pricey affair. But at least I’ll be able to choose something that’ll be a bit more durable than this Ultegra crap.