Dear Roulers,

I’ve been having a terrible run of outs with mechanical failures.  My Villier still isn’t back from the workshop due to the non-arrival of parts from whoever the local Conagolo dealer is….bummer.  The yesterday on my afternoon commute home I discovered that the back wheel of Cannondale has a whopping big buckle.

I’ll be buggered if I can figure out how exactly, I did that.  The buckle was so bad that it felt like the hub may have been shot.  Either way I’m be experiencing my own personal walk of shame to the bike shop with yet another tale of woe.  However the upside is that I still do have a third string bike, my Giant Sedona, purchased in 1997, that bike is heading towards 20 years old. The only bits that I’ve replaced on it have been the saddle twice, the pedals for some shiny one sided SPD clip-ins, the bottle cage and grippy tyres for some slicks.  Its showing signs of age with scratches and rust marks, but it’s still going strong.

I took it out for a ride with my wife this morning and was able to keep up with her on her much newer Giant Defy.  It must have looked a bit odd to the passing pelotons. It’s amazing the difference in power you can put into the bottom bracket of rigid frame bike.  By comparison the head shok Cannondale seemed to be about 2 to 3km slower on the same ride last week. All I can say is thank God I ignored my wife and kept my third string bike. It simply reminds me of the often quoted Velominati law of bike ownership ->

 Rule #12: The correct number of bikes to own is n+1

On http://abicycleculture.tumblr.com/, I found a variation of the law provided by Corkgrips, who clearly has the same domestic “issues”, that I have:

While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.  This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner….from Velominati’s Rules

Until next time, see you on the roads.