Beautiful Day - Bad Luck

[Veronica]

A friend and I go out for a ride after work. About 3 miles into the ride, I stop for a light and hear this clunk. Then when I start up again, it sounds like something is squeaking. I know my drive train needs some major cleaning since I've been riding so much in the rain. So my first inclination is it's that. I promise I'll take care of it soon. But it gets worse and now sounds like something is rubbing. We stop and investigate and my rear tire is rubbing against my brake, but only in one place. Kind of weird. Check out the brakes, they're in solid, check the tire placement, it's is in.

I decide I'm going back home, so I can put it in the stand and figure out what's really wrong.

I broke a spoke! I never even considered looking at my spokes. I've heard of people breaking them, but it's always on those low count, go fast wheels. I don't have those.

Maybe I'll steal Thom's rear wheel. He'll never notice, especially since I put a Speed Blend tire on it last week.


V.

[SadieKate]

It's probably those high speed descents on bad pavement. That's why they call it Devil mountain!

[snapdragen]

Spokes are tricky beasties. It took me close to a month to track down a click-click-click. Turned out to be a loose spoke.

[MightyMitre]

My BF was out for a mtb ride with some friends and he's a bit out of condition at the moment, which is why he thought he was having so much trouble keeping up. That was untill he started the ride home, which is back into town along the main road, which slopes gently for about 2 miles - normally v. easy to free wheel in the mid teens mph with no effort. BF was having real trouble though - he kept slowing down and even had to pedal.

V. confussed, he started to think he was more unfit than he realised. When he got back he started to hose down the bike, which was when he found the broken spoke in the real wheel which had been slowing him down!

About 3 miles into the ride, I stop for a light ... V.

Glad you found the break while cruising and not while on a tricky descent, but not sure you should be smoking on the bike...

[newfsmith]

Last summer they were widening the road in front of my work place, so I was riding on some very rough roadways all summer. One morning I noticed that I was feeling very slow and awkward. Even though I did look at my spokes I didn't find the offending one until I actually got to work. The cross lacing held it in position, but the head was broken off. That is the first spoke I've broken in nearly 11,000 miles of commuting. It did give me a chance to try out the Fiber-fix spoke I've carried for the past 4.5 years. It worked well, truing my wheel enough that I could ride home. By the way, I'm so tone-deaf I can't test my spokes by sound. Other than buying a tensionometer, does anyone know of a way to check with out plucking the spokes?