Fat Boy Deluxe

Spearman has often described me as lucky or maybe it was damn lucky, ha. Me, I just think it’s more about keeping one’s head in a not so ideal situation. Panic only causes you to make a quick decision with no idea of the outcome and cooler heads will prevail.

My commuting has been going well, but I’ve had a few mechanical issues that have popped up along the way. First it was my ghettotastic zip ties breaking and letting my rack fall backwards…my own fault really. The real clamps that are supposed to be used came in the mail last week and I got everything reinstalled. The latest incident was having my cog come off the hub. The hub is a LeVel hub I won a few years ago for being the only one to ride the ECNASSCU fixed. The cool thing about the hub is the cog slides on and sits on what they call “knuckles”, which take all the pressure. Then 3 bolts simply hold the cog onto the hub. It works great and I’ve never had an issue with the hub since I built it up. That was until last week when somehow a couple of the bolts must have worked their way out and the third bolt sheered right off. With nothing left to hold the cog in place it quickly pulled off the hub, leaving me with no brakes on the steepest decline of my commute.

Now some people will go with the standard “well you’re an ass anyway for not at least having an emergency brake up front”, but hey, then I wouldn’t have any fun stories to tell. Now normally in this situation you can just stick your foot around to the back wheel and wedge it between the frame and tire, slowing you down. You could also do that same trick between the front wheel and the fork. Then there’s always the grabbing the wheel with a gloved hand trick (make sure you know what you’re doing on this one, otherwise you’ll end up with a hand stuck between the frame and tire). Finally, you can take your chances and ride it out until there’s a place to stop. I took the final option, hoping my chain wouldn’t fly into the wheel and cause me to pull a nice long skid. So the cog and chain go freewheeling and I’m doing about 20 mph and gaining. Over a speedbump and around the left side of the car going over said speedbump into a right turn with another speed bump, avoid the oncoming traffic coming up the hill (boy were they surprised)…down low and up front on the top tube, left foot stretched out next to the front wheel to navigate (Sidi’s hard plastic bottom not the best for stopping traction), eventually grinding to a halt at the nearest flat section. Thankfully I was able to stop before the next downward pitch which ends at a stop light with a mandatory left/right turn.

The worst part was having to hike the bike back up the hill to the apt. It’s steep enough that it’s hard to walk uphill in those Sidi shoes, ah, but I do like the shoes. So no harm, no foul. The bike is back up and running with a few water bottle bolts…that’s what I’m talking about! At some point here I’ll get all tech savvy and figure out how to copy the elevation profile to post here so you can see that the hill is actually steep.