It was 54 years ago, at boarding school, when I last I fired a .303 rifle. I was part of the House target shooting team (rather than a member of a School Punishment Squad - by then punishment was corporal not capital). I remember the sound it made.
On days when I go for a ride, I cycle rather than walk up to the garage to collect my paper. It's only a couple of hundred yards, but helps establish how much clothing will be needed and saves time. As I returned, braking to turn onto the forecourt, there was a very loud CRACK!!!!. It was that .303 sound! Followed by the screeching of alloy rim on tarmac. I look down at the front wheel of Pearson (my winter fixed) to see the tyre one side of the rim, and the tattered inner tube on the other. A curl of of alloy was jammed into the brake caliper. Our bedroom is on the ground floor, so Mrs Blogger heard the noise. A B&B Guest in his bedroom in the Barn down the garden heard it, too. They both thought the sound had come from a car or motorbike.
"Good job" I thought to myself "that I wasn't doing 30mph downhill" Pearson had only the previous day returned from Mick Madgett's for new sprocket and chain to cure transmission noise. This wasn't the first time that Pearson had come to a screeching halt (see 20 November 2011 Blog for the unshipped-chain-at-25-mph incident). Remove wheel, select a front from another bike and proceed to rendezvous with the rest of the "loose association of like-minded gentlemen" who are to be my partners for the morning and I tell them what happened - eyes are widened, they all check their own rims for wear. My own rear rim is given a close examination - but how can you tell? Any wheel that's suffered a winter's riding will have some material ground away by the brake-blocks-plus-grit-and-mud mixture. It would be expected that the front would get the most wear - but how much longer do I wait before my rear rim fails?
We toil into the head and cross head winds via Knettishall Heath and East Harling, swing North and East to come into Thetford through Croxton. Having been dropped as everyone picked up the full-on tailwind and slight descent following the sharp climb through Croxton, I caught up on the slight incline (they were sort-of waiting for me) and swept by, head down, legs going like an eggwhisk and tried to keep ahead to Thetford Garden Centre - about a couple of miles. My maximum sustainable speed on 66" fixed is 24mph (though I touched 29) so, with a following wind and a fair bit of almost downhill I was onto a hiding to nothing being chased down by guys with gears. R*n pulled past with only a couple of hundred yards to go, followed by J*s*in then P*t*r.
We coped with the current serving arrangements at the Thetford GC Café. This appears to be a job creation scheme, and therefore ought to be cause for congratulation rather than complaint but here's the complaint anyway. We used to queue-up, place our orders and pay, find a table, food would be delivered, we would consume then leave. Now we find a table, sit and wait. Eventually our order is taken - but we can't see what's on offer even though it's on display just as it used to be back in the day when we would shuffle along and point to food mumbling "one of those please". When we leave, we have to queue to pay, against the flow of new customers - some of whom will assume that they should be queueing past the display. The food is reasonable and the price competitive, but the system is irritating. Having just spent an entire paragraph on geriatric obsession with matters of little real importance, I notice that my main point about staff numbers doesn't really apply. So, moving on . . . .
Normal route home, no surprises, no one dropped. Ixworth High Street; we discuss the fuss about the surface, and had just decided that however rough it might be it shouldn't be a safety issue because it doesn't include a corner when . . CRACK!!!!. That .303 sound again!. Here I (almost) go again, with a screaming rim sliding from left to right and left again - 18mph suddenly feels perilously fast as I struggle to slow down and then stop. I hadn't even touched the brake (Ah, it must have been that road surface after all).
Phone home (lucky I wasn't north of Thetford) for recovery vehicle. What, we debate, would be the odds of having two rim-failures in the same day? 0800hrs and 1305hrs. We would assume a longer life for the rear wheel because the front brake is used more often. I am now in the position to define this differential; 46 miles. I could also put a number on the cost - but I'm not going to. I'm not much of a one for facing reality. On the bright side, the tyres, unlike the tubes, seem undamaged.
On days when I go for a ride, I cycle rather than walk up to the garage to collect my paper. It's only a couple of hundred yards, but helps establish how much clothing will be needed and saves time. As I returned, braking to turn onto the forecourt, there was a very loud CRACK!!!!. It was that .303 sound! Followed by the screeching of alloy rim on tarmac. I look down at the front wheel of Pearson (my winter fixed) to see the tyre one side of the rim, and the tattered inner tube on the other. A curl of of alloy was jammed into the brake caliper. Our bedroom is on the ground floor, so Mrs Blogger heard the noise. A B&B Guest in his bedroom in the Barn down the garden heard it, too. They both thought the sound had come from a car or motorbike.
"Good job" I thought to myself "that I wasn't doing 30mph downhill" Pearson had only the previous day returned from Mick Madgett's for new sprocket and chain to cure transmission noise. This wasn't the first time that Pearson had come to a screeching halt (see 20 November 2011 Blog for the unshipped-chain-at-25-mph incident). Remove wheel, select a front from another bike and proceed to rendezvous with the rest of the "loose association of like-minded gentlemen" who are to be my partners for the morning and I tell them what happened - eyes are widened, they all check their own rims for wear. My own rear rim is given a close examination - but how can you tell? Any wheel that's suffered a winter's riding will have some material ground away by the brake-blocks-plus-grit-and-mud mixture. It would be expected that the front would get the most wear - but how much longer do I wait before my rear rim fails?
We toil into the head and cross head winds via Knettishall Heath and East Harling, swing North and East to come into Thetford through Croxton. Having been dropped as everyone picked up the full-on tailwind and slight descent following the sharp climb through Croxton, I caught up on the slight incline (they were sort-of waiting for me) and swept by, head down, legs going like an eggwhisk and tried to keep ahead to Thetford Garden Centre - about a couple of miles. My maximum sustainable speed on 66" fixed is 24mph (though I touched 29) so, with a following wind and a fair bit of almost downhill I was onto a hiding to nothing being chased down by guys with gears. R*n pulled past with only a couple of hundred yards to go, followed by J*s*in then P*t*r.
We coped with the current serving arrangements at the Thetford GC Café. This appears to be a job creation scheme, and therefore ought to be cause for congratulation rather than complaint but here's the complaint anyway. We used to queue-up, place our orders and pay, find a table, food would be delivered, we would consume then leave. Now we find a table, sit and wait. Eventually our order is taken - but we can't see what's on offer even though it's on display just as it used to be back in the day when we would shuffle along and point to food mumbling "one of those please". When we leave, we have to queue to pay, against the flow of new customers - some of whom will assume that they should be queueing past the display. The food is reasonable and the price competitive, but the system is irritating. Having just spent an entire paragraph on geriatric obsession with matters of little real importance, I notice that my main point about staff numbers doesn't really apply. So, moving on . . . .
Normal route home, no surprises, no one dropped. Ixworth High Street; we discuss the fuss about the surface, and had just decided that however rough it might be it shouldn't be a safety issue because it doesn't include a corner when . . CRACK!!!!. That .303 sound again!. Here I (almost) go again, with a screaming rim sliding from left to right and left again - 18mph suddenly feels perilously fast as I struggle to slow down and then stop. I hadn't even touched the brake (Ah, it must have been that road surface after all).
Phone home (lucky I wasn't north of Thetford) for recovery vehicle. What, we debate, would be the odds of having two rim-failures in the same day? 0800hrs and 1305hrs. We would assume a longer life for the rear wheel because the front brake is used more often. I am now in the position to define this differential; 46 miles. I could also put a number on the cost - but I'm not going to. I'm not much of a one for facing reality. On the bright side, the tyres, unlike the tubes, seem undamaged.
I have been thinking(yes really)on the odds of two wheels blowing like that within hours of each other. One common denominator is that they were of equal age but equal wear?? I wondered if that very morning you had inflated both tyres and overdone it, such that the higher than usual pressure on both rims caused worn rims to fail. I have felt your tyres before Stephen(such intimacies are common amongst mates)and they are usually harder than rocks. Is it your gauge that's out or your eyesight?
ReplyDeleteSo now you can see me topping-up the pressures in my own back garden? To allow for age-related problems of concentration and eyesightness (as I read in the instructions for a pair of Japanese binoculars) I have placed the red plastic marker at 100psi. The odds were shortened on the two-wheels-in-a-single-day stakes by the fact that the wheels were bought at the same time, and only ever used together.
ReplyDeletedamn - what were the rims? 100psi doesn't sound extreme; I've heard that you shoud run a caliper gauge on the rim walls occasionally, to check for the sub-one-mil moment. read the entry on rim wear in the retrogrouch blog link
ReplyDeleteMavic Open Pro. They've been replaced with Mavic Open Sport, which only come in silver, are slightly heavier but, crucially, have a wear-indicator groove.
ReplyDeleteWish I'd saved the old ones, now, for further examination.
uh-oh - the fixie is running open pros...
ReplyDelete