Ping!

I was riding along with a few of my cycling friends doing the Tuesday club ride. We were headed back to Lockeford in foggy, dreary and frigid conditions. I felt a bump from my rear wheel and wondered what I could have hit on a smooth and pothole free road.

I didn’t hit anything: one of the spokes on my rear wheel decided it had been under tension long enough and and went ‘ping!’

The bicycle wheel is an amazing piece of engineering. The spokes and rim look small and flimsy, but they are very strong. Even with the lightest wheel set problems are rare.

I started riding significant miles back in 1999, and I’ve done at least 130,000 miles over those two plus decades. And I only remember breaking a spoke 3 times, with last Tuesday being #3. That seems quite amazing, especially since I have some very light wheels not specifically built up as bulletproof.

I should mention that the wheel that caused the problem is from my oldest set of HED Ardennes, dating back at least 12 years. I don’t know if my Master Mechanic Mark ‘optimized’ them, but if he did it was over a decade ago and he certainly cannot be held responsible, especially since I know others have adjusted those spokes since then.

When you break a spoke the wheel immediately goes ‘out of true’, which means the rim wobbles side to side like a hula dancer. The rim rubs against the brake levers and the tire may rub against the chain stays.

If you are a talented mechanic and carry a spoke wrench, you can use it to adjust the remaining spokes and take most of the wobble out of the rim. I don’t carry a spoke wrench since I don’t have the slightest idea how to use it. So I loosened the brake cable to provide maximum clearance, but the tire kept rubbing against the frame.

I was going to wrap the broken spoke around a neighboring one and try to ride, wobble and all. My friend Steve carries a piece of duct tape in his saddle bag, which worked much better than bending and tying off the broken spoke. Self take note, add duct tape to the emergency supplies.

And for some reason, when I got on the bike and started to ride, the rim ran a little truer and the tire didn’t rub against the stays. So I was able to limp back to my car without calling Stoker for assistance or begging one of my fellow riders to come back and pick me up. It would have been cold and miserable waiting for a ride.

I have replacement spokes for the Ardennes. Since I travel with these wheels (including Idaho last June) I want to be prepared. I took the wheel and spokes to Lodi Cyclery for repair. These wheels may be near the end of their life or they may go many miles yet. But I think they have done their last trip.