Editor’s Statement
Parts can hold a lot of stories—take the battered rim in this issue’s tech piece on page 72. I first built that wheel for my road bike six or seven years ago, and while in roadie terms I did not exactly pile on the miles on that bike it did see a few thousand over the years. Rural roads just outside of town, exploring dirt paths mirroring old railroad tracks, getting ruthlessly dropped by much faster friends, my first century. Two particular rides led to its eventual demise.
Two years ago I did a solo ride to Washington DC via the trail system that thousands of others experience every year. Breaking my rules of over-preparation for flats on such a trip I left home with only two tubes, and of course got a flat tire just outside of town. Neglecting to patch the punctured tube the first night or purchase a replacement at one of half dozen small shops I passed it was only appropriate that I would break the valve stem off of my only spare as night fell on the second day, with a storm rolling in. The scars along the outside of the wheel are from opting to ride into camp on the rim to avoid camping right there in the middle of the soon to be pitch-black trail.
The incident that finally did in the rim and led to the replacement was a more hair-raising experience, akin to many cyclist’s worst fears. Casually riding in a well lit, relatively tight packed group we were hit from behind at full speed by a drunk driver. Two riders at the back of the pack took the impact before the car veered sharply left and incredibly missed the rest of us by mere inches. The driver sped away, the injured pair spent a night or two in the hospital for observation and otherwise came away beat up but in one piece, with a concussion and a broken collarbone between the two of them. The driver was caught a few minutes after the incident, with bicycle parts reportedly stuck in the grill of his car. I didn’t go down in the melee, but somehow came away with a rear wheel that wouldn’t clear the stays and reason to think about all sorts of better or worse ways the evening could have gone.
I’m not particularly sentimental about bike parts. I’ll admit to having a few pieces around that have no utility but for memory at this point, but this rim is going directly to scrap. Nothing to see here.