I Spoke Too Soon

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Tomorrow, I’ll temporarily cease being a cyclist. Just for tomorrow, mind. My bike’s going on yet another visit to the bike shop due to yet another bloody broken spoke.

Aaaargh.

This is the fourth broken spoke I’ve had in as many months. An average of one broken spoke a month is not good – noone else I’ve spoken to *pun intended* about this problem has ever suffered as many (if, indeed, they’ve ever had a broken spoke at all). I found this latest casualty when I was parking the bike today. I could take it to the UCD bike shop and have it fixed, of course – but I get the feeling that the problem would just happen again. So, depending on the advice I get from the mechanic tomorrow, it’s a new rear wheel for me, and a slightly emptier pocket.

With every spoke that breaks I wonder what I’m doing wrong. I love my bike (the older, silver version of this) dearly, but it’s clear that the spokes don’t love me back. I moved house in April, and have been making much longer cycle journeys since then. The law of averages means, naturally, that more cycling = more chance of damage. There are some poor road surfaces along my route, too – Leinster Road, with its tarmac caving in under the weight of SUVs ploughing up and down it, being a case in point. But other people cycle these routes and cycle for the same distances as I do, and they don’t have this recurring problem.

I pondered whether the persistent spoke breaking was due to weight on the bike, but it seems that you’d have to be fairly overweight to put the sort of pressure on a back wheel that breaks spokes. I don’t ride the bike very hard, as far as I can tell – although I do admit to hopping off pavements from time to time. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I’ve read that not trueing the wheel properly after replacing a spoke can just continue to weaken the structure of the spokes and the wheel – but after the last spoke repair, my wheel came out of the workshop straight as a die.

And yet, my spokes are still giving up on me. At this stage I’m of the opinion that it’s bad bike karma, visited upon me as a result of the frustrated kick I once delivered to the tyre of the bike abandoned on the rack outside our offices, taking up valuable parking space and making it difficult for me to park my bike properly. Perhaps a final sacrifice to the bicycle gods of my hard-earned cash and my old back wheel will be enough to appease them.

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Tags: cycling, dublin, maintenance, repairs, spokes, wheel