Stuff Breaking While Bicycling

It's going to happen when you bike - something breaks on you. This year has had a couple of memorable moments.

First, I lost my crankset. I was about a mile into my ride home when my pedals felt wrong. Wobbly or something like that. I thought maybe it was the forks. After a few minutes, it got worse and suddenly, both pedals were down, and I couldn't pedal at all. It turns out that somehow, I had stripped the non-drive side crank arm spline. The crank arm should have fit into the crank, meshing with the spline. That had worn out, and now the arm just spun around. I stopped, cranked the bolts as tight as I could, and babied the bike back home. About $26 later (plus shipping), I got a new crankset. Nothing special, but enough to keep the biking moving.

Yesterday, when biking, my rear tire went flat. Stopped and pulled it apart. I had a thorn resistant tube in the back, and it seemed that the valve stem rotted away and leaked. Threw it away and put on a replacement tube. However, while replacing the tube. I noticed some 1/4" holes in the tire itself. I had known that the tire was worn out at least a year an a half ago, but it was still ok. I thought the tread was just worn. However, I could clearly see through the tire. I put it back together, pumped it up, and babied it to the local Sheetz gas station where they have free air. Pumped it up, biked home, and swapped out the tire and tube to another thorn resistant tube I found in my collection.

Score so far this year: