Yay! No headwind today!

I started out in grey, hazy weather. It had rained all morning, and the roads were just beginning to dry in spots. The rain kicked in about halfway to work, and it felt serious so I put on my rain jacket. A downpour filled my shoes shortly thereafter.

Does anyone else think you go faster when the roads are covered with water? I seem to. I wonder why....

Got to town fine, and stopped to run an errand or two before heading down to the library on Main street.

A big, taxi-yellow vehicle (I think it was a jeep or pickup, I'm a bad witness.) didn't see me and ran out from the stop sign on a collision course with me. Both of us slammed the brakes on in time to avoid an accident. The driver waited for me to go, and I gave him a wave as I went on. Couldn;t really blame him, the visibility wasn't the best and I'm sure he wasn't expecting a bike in the rain.

Unfortunately (and this is the one thing I hate about Grip shifters) I had inadvertently changed several gears during the emergency stop, and I restarted with a lot of popping, snapping, and chain-slipping from the rear...which slowed down but didn't stop. I was afraid I had wrecked my freewheel, but couldn't see any broken teeth. Didn't have time to check it out more thoroughly.

On the trip home (Yeah, I still rode it home. And it drizzled the whole time.) I noticed that the problems mainly occurred in the higher (smaller) back gears, and with enough gap between the pops that I thought it must be the chain instead of the gears that was damaged. Sure enough, when I got home, flipped the bike and turned the cranks, a pair of links humped up on the derailleur wheel. I'll be removing those links in the morning, hope that fixes everything.