So for a few days, I'd been hearing that dreaded "tick, tick" sound every time I completed a pedal revolution. By this morning, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would need to replace my bottom bracket before heading out on my first summer mini-tour a couple of weeks from now. The cost wasn't bothering me so much, but the stress of finding time to do it and the mere thought of having to get all that stubborn bike grease and road slime out of my finger nails didn't excite me much.

Then I heard something small and metallic hit the road below me. Something so tiny that I definitely would not have heard it drop if I had been playing my iPod, as usual. I stopped to investigate and somehow noticed that the crimped-on ferrule at the end of my rear brake cable was gone. (This is how in-tune I am with my 19-year-old clunker of a bike!). Always the investigator, I decided to get the bike rolling again and check out a theory I developed within seconds of the discovery.

To spare you any more agonizing anticipation, it turns out that every time my heel crossed the place where a few centimeters of brake cable happened to be extruding from my rear caliper brake, it made contact and produced a loud "tick" sound, wearing away at the helpless little ferrule until it finally popped off. The bottom line was that I did not need to replace my bottom bracket; I just needed to slightly bend the slack on my brake cable out of the way so my foot wouldn't hit it every time it came around. Great detective work for a guy who has been riding and working on bicycles for more than forty years, eh? Anyway, problem solved, and while I feel good about avoiding a repair, I feel like an idiot for letting this go for more than a few days without realizing what was happening.

So, have you ever misdiagnosed a click or a rub or a rattle and realized later that you had missed some simple little thing like a heel striking a brake cable?