The Bikes
We intended to ride our road bikes to the wedding, and rent a car to drive home. There was only one issue: there were no rental cars available within a 50km radius. Perhaps this was due to wedding season, but maybe it was destiny.
I had a crazy idea. See, I already had a Brompton. I bought it used about a year ago. A little rough around the edges, but I loved it. You're allowed to take folding bikes on the Via Rail trains. I brought up that we could buy Mel a Brompton as well, then we could bike down on them, and take the train back. The upfront cost would be substantial (about 2500 Canadian Dollars), but we would save about 500 in the rental car (that didn't exist anyway), another 500 in travel costs associated with biking home, and also the time it would take to bike back.
Typically risk averse, I was expecting Mel to question the impulsive purchase (perhaps rightfully so). Not this time. She was on board immediately. We had about 2 months to source this Brompton, so we didn't have much time to lose.
Our first thought was the local Brompton importer. They gave us a timeline that was unfortunately long. Then we thought of Curbside Cycle in Toronto. They're a bigger store, and surely it can't cost much to ship a Brompton. Heck, we could go pick it up if we needed too.
They were expecting a shipment within the month.
Bingo.
We put a deposit down on a M6L Racing Green beauty. At this point we had about 8 weeks until our tour, and were in high spirits. We began dreaming up other Brompton adventures we could go on, and immediately booked another train trip to Montreal after our tour. Things were great.
4 weeks out. After the month that Curbside had quoted Mel sent an email inquiring about the whereabouts of her new bike. They said sometimes they get caught up in shipping, but will be in soon.
3 weeks out. Still no word. Panic beginning to set in. What if it doesn't come? Can we borrow someone else's? We could bring a fabric bike bag and break down our road bike for the train?
2 weeks out. Relief. The bike arrived. Safe and sound. But what's this? We had ordered the smaller chainring (44T instead of 50T) since we're slow, but the chainring looked about the same size as mine. And it was. They had installed the wrong chainring. A new one will be sent right away. Okay, not a big deal. We then took it out for a ride, as you do on NBD. Nearing the end of our 20km loop in the humid heat, Mel's chain looks...floppy. The jockey wheel on her chain tensioner was missing! We backtracked and were able to find most of the pieces, but were a bit bewildered. Curbside assured us that this was simply bad luck from the Brompton assembly line, and they would send us a new tensioner and all would be fine.
And it was. With Mel's bike at least.
My Brompton had been a bit creaky over the past couple weeks. I assumed it was some combination of it being dirty, a bit old, and having the old style of bottom bracket. 2 days before we were scheduled to leave, I'm pedalling home from work, when my bike makes a terrible sound and I literally screech to a halt.
More panic.
I assumed the bottom bracket had failed. I couldn't move the cranks, and the creaking from before was coming from that area. I set out on finding a new bottom bracket. A nearby bike shop happens to have the right one in stock. Excellent. We went to pick it up and hope they can quickly help us install it. They didn't have the bottom bracket tool to remove the old bottom bracket. More panic. They suggested another nearby bike shop.
We walked into the next bike shop. They have it! And can fix it by tomorrow! A miracle.
I waited by the phone the next day. I had taken the day off in advance to have time to pack, but it turned into a phone-staring day. Time passed. Too much time. I called them at 3:25 after telling myself I would wait until 3:30. They hadn't started working on it yet, but it would be done by 5:30, 30 minutes before they close. This stressed me out. I don't like tight deadlines. I would rather be an hour early than 5 minutes late.
More phone-staring.
Phone rings at 5:15. I said I'll be right over.
I arrive and he says the bottom bracket was fine, but he replaced it anyway and that my bike was really dirty. All of these were true statements. I was a bit confused at the first item though. What made the horrible creaking and screeching? The crank was rubbing on the frame so I just put a spacer in the bottom bracket.
What.
I picked up my bike and it suddenly made sense. The bolts on the hinge of the rear triangle were loose and the whole back half of the bike had flexed into the crank, leading to the screeching and halting. After some gentle persuasion, I convinced him to tighten the bolts while he had the tools out, and voila. Creaking solved.
This was about 14 hours before our tour was going to begin. I now had to ride home (about 1 km), convince Mel that my bike was going to be fine, and clean all the gunk off my drive chain (I made the mistake of adding Wet Lube on top of a wax-based lube, please don't ever do this), and pack.
At least we had the bikes.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 5 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |