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09-30-07, 11:15 PM
Was a disaster!
Yesterday I took a cx clinic and learned a lot of things, most importantly I can't get away with clips and straps on a grass course, but also I needed to adjust my bars.
I go home and unwrap the bars and loosen the brake levers, and something happens to the levers so that I can't loosen or tighten them. Turns out the nut inside the band dealy was spinning around, some wicked combination of a stripped bolt and an unseated nut (those tektro brake levers that can creek also sells- I'll never use them again without getting a better band to use with them) even though there's no way I could have ever cross-theaded them. Anyway, I has to cut my bar in two just to see what had happened.
Now I've got a vintage cx bike and for some reason the handlebars were 25.4 diameter so of course was the stem. So there's no way I'd be able to find a new pair of drops in that diameter here in town... if the shops weren't already closed anyway, making any "throw money at it" solution untenable. So I write the promoters and ask if I can get a refund, cuz I pre-registered, and a guy answered the email saying I could ride a new tricross expert demo if I wanted.
Cool! So I go there and go for a test ride and even though I wasn't going fast, wasn't even trying to turn yet, and thought I was barely tapping the rear brakes, my rear wheel just disappears from underneath me on an off-cambered section of dewy wet grass and I come down hard on my head and shoulder- harder than I've ever gone down before- I cracked my helmet and I think seriously injured my shoulder- that hard. I can't raise my left arm at all.
So in short I don't have a bike, can't ride a bike, and spent $35 for the pleasure of injuring myself badly without even getting to race.
Yay! First race!
Yesterday I took a cx clinic and learned a lot of things, most importantly I can't get away with clips and straps on a grass course, but also I needed to adjust my bars.
I go home and unwrap the bars and loosen the brake levers, and something happens to the levers so that I can't loosen or tighten them. Turns out the nut inside the band dealy was spinning around, some wicked combination of a stripped bolt and an unseated nut (those tektro brake levers that can creek also sells- I'll never use them again without getting a better band to use with them) even though there's no way I could have ever cross-theaded them. Anyway, I has to cut my bar in two just to see what had happened.
Now I've got a vintage cx bike and for some reason the handlebars were 25.4 diameter so of course was the stem. So there's no way I'd be able to find a new pair of drops in that diameter here in town... if the shops weren't already closed anyway, making any "throw money at it" solution untenable. So I write the promoters and ask if I can get a refund, cuz I pre-registered, and a guy answered the email saying I could ride a new tricross expert demo if I wanted.
Cool! So I go there and go for a test ride and even though I wasn't going fast, wasn't even trying to turn yet, and thought I was barely tapping the rear brakes, my rear wheel just disappears from underneath me on an off-cambered section of dewy wet grass and I come down hard on my head and shoulder- harder than I've ever gone down before- I cracked my helmet and I think seriously injured my shoulder- that hard. I can't raise my left arm at all.
So in short I don't have a bike, can't ride a bike, and spent $35 for the pleasure of injuring myself badly without even getting to race.
Yay! First race!