I had jury duty Monday afternoon. We ended up being dismissed at 2:00. So, I sent a text to my boss & let him know I was taking the rest of the day off, he agreed.
If you recall, it was windy as $h!it on Monday, 50 mph gusts, and for some reason I decided to go to the library & HEB on my bike.
I was riding on Hancock minding my own business when all of a sudden a big gust of wind came at me. With it can a plastic bag that some disrespectful person had littered. I thought nothing of the bag that was blowing towards my bike. That bag being pissed that it had been disposed of improperly landed in my chain, and got sucked up into the derailleur. I had no idea where it ended up, until about 5 pedal strokes later when I couldn't pedal. I come to a stop, turn my bike over & tried to pull it out, but it was a really pissed off bag and it twisted its way all around the 2 gears in the derailleur. So, I walked the bike to the corner store & bought a lighter hoping to burn it out.
Well, remember those 50 mph gusts? , it was too windy to get a flame with the lighter. So I set off to CVS to buy an Aim n Flame & get out of the wind. Aim n Flames are quite pricey at CVS.
I burned quite about off & was able to pedal better. My hands were all black and I had on khacki shorts, so I went inside CVS to wash them. While washing my hands, I looked in the mirror and I had black marks all over my face! I looked like I went to an Ash Weds. Mass and I got the blind priest!
On my way home to get my car & forfeit the bike ride, all of a sudden I could pedal normally, so I went to the library to pick up a DVD & return the others. Then I went grocery shopping at HEB only to find out HEB didn't have that one important product (or shall I say brand) I was looking for!!
Once home, I put the bike on my handy dandy bike holder I created using pvc pipe & galvanized pipe.
I took the Aim & Flame to the bag & it burned off nicely, I was then able to use needle nose pliers and a utility knife to cut off the rest of it. The derailleur was turning nicely. I was a happy biker.
Later that night after bootcamp, I took a closer look and noticed more bag, so out came the Aim n Flame. After I turned of the AnF, there was still a flame & it was one of the gears on the derailleur. Great, they are plastic and it is on fire!! I blew it out, gave the pedal a spin and the chain imprinted into the gear. In hindsight I should have licked my fingers & molded the plastic. So, now to figure out if I need a new derailleur ($$) or can I replace the plastic disks. Iput on the readers & looking closely at the disks, there was a bolt, so, you can remove the disks. Now just to find new disks...how I remembered I had a random Shimano derailleur in my shed, I don't know, but I did, so one of these days I can replace them, until then, it doesn't seem to be causing too much harm.
Other wind damage that personally affected me: fence slat was blow off, just a slat that I had previously nailed back, screws better keep it up now.
And this:
 | ||||
| Both Chris the Rooster & Pschye were blown off their stump, some nice neighbor righted them. |
And I lost 2 wheels off the back porch cover:
 | |||
| Only 1 is missing in this photo, the one on the far right also fell. |
**************************************************************
Miles for this ride: 4.5 & 10.28
Total miles for the month of February: 119.29
Total miles for 2013: 250.13
Miles til 2013: 1762.87 (got a long way to go)
One way commutes in February so far: 5 uh oh, hope to be at 7 by the end of the month 1 more day
Total one way commutes in 2013: 8
Odometer
Road: 13303poor thing is being neglected
Cross: 1628
Trip2:
Road: 124.70
Cross: 137.14 (accidentally reset it again, darn it...now I get to add 104 each time....I think)
No comments:
Post a Comment