Playing In Traffic

Do you believe in omens?  I really think some things happen in your life that are nothing more than messages that need to be heeded.  Maybe they happen to us every day, but we’re just too pre-occupied or oblivious to notice them.  Maybe we don’t want to see them.  Maybe we’re just clueless.  But sometimes we’re awake and ready for the message.  Sometimes we’re looking for a message.  I choose to believe that’s what happened to me yesterday.

I hauled out the repair stand yesterday to work on my commuter/beater/Italian framed abused 2nd bike.  One of the things I wanted to do was true the rear wheel, which had very suddenly become out of whack the last day I used it to commute, many, many days ago.  After working on it for a while, and not having any success at getting it back into round-ness, I was about to bite the bullet and pay to have it trued.  That’s when I first saw the tear.  The wheel was coming apart between 2 spoke nipples.  Have you ever seen that in a wheel?  It’s very disconcerting.  You don’t expect wheels to tear — they’re made out of all those fancy alloys and carbon fiber thingys.  But what made me stand up and shudder was this was the second time I’ve seen this in a year.  The first time I’d just gone to the bike shop and bought a new wheel (“And make it bomb proof!  Lots of thick spokes!”).  Now I was looking at it again.  Someone was trying to tell me something.  I could take my chances with another not-so-bomb-proof wheel, or I could cut to the chase.

It’s sad.  The Fiorelli has been very, very good to me.  Something like 15,000 miles, many of them riding the tough streets of Boston.  4 Pan-Mass Challenges, with not a mechanical  issue in any of them.  She never complained when I made her wear Japanese components.  And I didn’t treat her as well as I should of:  A couple of semi-bad crashes; she wasn’t always (ever?) as clean as she should have been; a nice steel frame that shows way too much iron oxide.

But it’s quite simply time.  So the Fiorelli will live in the garage for a little while, until I figure out what to do with her.  I can’t see putting her out for the trashmen to have their way with her.  But I don’t know what the Italian bicyle equivalent of a Viking funeral pyre is.  Should I take her to the Dolomites, and throw her off a switchback high on a mountain side?  Or bury her at sea in the Tyrolean Sea?  Suggestions anyone?

Filed under: bike commute