Breaking a spoke

      What happens when you ride and a spoke brakes? It's happened to me. I was stopped at a light and all of a sudden I heard a ping. I waited till the light changed and rode to the sidewalk. I found one of my rear spokes had just broke. I wrapped the broken spoke around an unbroken one and continued my ride. I did notice a slight wobble in the wheel but it was not bad. When I finished my ride I replaced the spoke and and got it trued. Truing a wheel is making the wheel straight and if done right puts proper tension on all the spokes. If you start to pop a lot of spokes it's time to get a new wheel. When one goes many time another then another will brake. This happens because the tension becomes uneven and stresses out all the other spokes on the wheel. If you find that your brake starts to rub you can sometimes loosen the brake just enough to keep going.  Hope this helps you stress less when it happens to you. It is usual not to bad and can be taken care of when you finish your ride.

Keep on Pedaling 

Marco

Commuting on a bike

    I'd like to tell you all about commuting to work on a bike. I rode my bike to work for over two years. First just one day a week then two and so forth. After several months I was riding every day. My commute was just over six miles.

    I worked in a bike shop in Los Angeles. At first I only had one route. After several months I had at least three different routes. One was very direct but had a lot of traffic as it was in a bike lane. Another way was street and bike path it had a lot less cars but more people. The third was through residential streets and about a mile longer. This way became my favorite because it had the least amount of traffic and was the most interesting. 

    Pedestrian traffic can be worse than cars as people will be wearing head phones or earbuds and not hear your approach. Many times I would be on the bike path and people would be walking in the bike lane not in the pedestrian part of the path and not get out of the way even after I alerted them to my presence. It became very frustrating as many people would scowl and sneer as I asked them to please walk on the pedestrian part of the path not on the bike part. I would alway be polite and slow down as to not frighten them but many time they still get angry. I alway felt that as a cyclist I was an ambassador for all cyclists and try to to be courteous to all.

     My ride home was mostly at night so I had several lights. one rear red light, two front white lights. Of the two front one was mounted on my handlebar and the other on my helmet. I came to really love riding at night as there was less traffic. I was also much cooler when I was riding in the summer.         My wife sewed reflective ribbon to my backpack as it was black and she felt better as I was more visible. Remember it's always better to be safe than sorry.

     My favorite night to commute was Halloween. The ride home was full of people in costume. Children everywhere were laughing, talking and having fun. The cars would drive slower and seemed to be more aware of people and cyclists. 

        Please let me know your commuting experiences. 

one of the many bike paths in Los Angeles

Keep on Pedaling

Marco