I had one of my more interesting morning rides into work today. While cruising up a hill at 18 mph still waking up I got a shock to the system that no amount of caffeine could provide. I felt a similar sensation to unclipping from my pedal. I looked down to see why I had come out of the pedal only to see the threads of a still attached eggbeater on my shoe. I proceeded to pedal with one leg up the hill, which I know had to be a great laugh to all the traffic buzzing past. When I got to a safe area to stop, I pulled over to asses the damage.
Last night I remembered right before I was going to bed that I had pulled the pedals off to race and had not put them back on. I went out to the shop and put some air in the tires and swapped the pedals. Had I cross threaded my crank while tired? Surely I did not cross thread both pedals, even while tired it would take an idiot to do that!!! Thankfully, I had not. I did discover that I had broken the outer thread completely off, the rest of the threads looked OK. I threaded the offending pedal back on and proceeded to pedal with one leg to a near by auto shop to beg for tools and get strange looks from the mechanics. Thankfully they had an 8mm Allan and I was back in business. After returning the tools and saying thanks, I hammered my way to work.
The rest of the ride I was holding 27 mph on the flats, being late is a good motivator. I was careful not to stand, I don't even want to think about the pain that loosing a pedal would cause while standing. After further inspection and cleaning at work, I think that I'll be OK in the short term so long as they are really tight. Might be a good time to upgrade to that double crank for a long term fix. I always thought that every crank tightened up the pedal, apparently only when they are tight to begin with. My standing climb must have worked them loose, thankfully I sat down right before it came out of the crank arm. Hope the ride home is uneventful. Big thanks to the wrenches that loaned me the 8mm!
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2 comments:
Good job Jason, tuff luck on the mis leading turn. I did mark that section of trail, but was told to put the tape on the ground. It's hard to notice it on the ground when all you see is blue dots.
Teach Monty about the word verification.
Those are the breaks man. No fault on the course tape job, my issue is with posting a map online and changing the race without mentioning that in the meeting. I thought about issuing a stop payment on my check for the race, because I decided to race fore free but neglected to tell them in the pre race meeting :)
Nice guys finish last anyway right.
Side note: Two years ago I won a 75 dollar bicycle computer for second place at the same event. I was very happy until I got it home and found that it was missing parts and the computer itself was broken. I notified the organizer who blew me off. Sold it on ebay for 5 bucks for parts. I don't shop at that bike shop.
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