Consecutive bicycle work commute number 2313:

It's been an interesting week of commuting so far. I already told the tale of Monday morning in my previous post above. Monday evening the temp had risen into the teens and I had a tail wind, so I rode the bike the whole way home from work. There was lots of rutted ice on both the MUP and the roads, making the ride treacherous and slow.

Yesterday morning the air temp was back down to 3°F, and the wind was blowing steady at 20 mph. It was behind me pushing for the ride to work, which I enjoyed at the time but knew I would loathe later on the way home. The rutted ice hadn't had a chance to melt any due to the low temperatures, so I had another treacherous and slow ride to work. Because of all the ice, I took the mountain bike with studded tires.

Yesterday afternoon the temp rose into the mid-20s, but it snowed again. We wound up getting about 3/4", which sat on top of all the rutted ice hiding it from view. On the roads, the cars had pummeled the new snowfall into mashed-potato snow, which is really tough to ride through as it provides no traction. It is dense enough to keep your tires from hitting the pavement/ice below it and digging in, but also doesn't stick to the pavement/ice causing it to slip out from underneath the tires. Couple that with the headwind and it made for a challenging ride.

I needed to ride home, change clothes, throw some food down my throat, and be at the theater by 6:30 so I left work about 15 minutes early at 4:45 PM. That turned out to be fortuitous that I left early. About a mile from the office as I was riding down the MUP I thought, "My left pedal feels funny." I looked down and could see the crank visibly wiggling back and forth on the bottom bracket spindle. I looked like it was about to fall off. Unfortunately, in my tool kit I didn't have an allen wrench large enough to try and tighten it. I ascertained that it probably wasn't going to survive the entire ride home. I then decided that if I call for help immediately, maybe someone could rendezvous with me at one of the parking lots up ahead and save me some time vs waiting to call when it finally broke.

I called my son. As luck would have it, he was just leaving an appointment and was driving my truck. He also was less than a mile from where I was currently standing. I asked him to meet me at a parking lot about 1/4 mile further down the MUP. I continued to pedal slowly towards the lot. I was about 200 yards away when the crank completely fell off. Upon inspection, the square hole in the aluminum crank arm that fits over the square taper on the spindle was visibly no longer square. Looks like it had slowly wallowed itself out over the years and finally got loose enough to fall off. I pushed the bike the last little bit right as my son arrived with the truck. I threw my bike in the back and he drove me home, which actually got me home a little faster than had I not had mechanical trouble.

This morning, the temp was a balmy 28°F and hardly any wind. With the studded-tire mountain bike out of commission I had no choice but to ride the Salsa fat tire bike, which I tend to dislike due to how much effort it takes to pedal (I'm lazy.) Due to all the mashed potato snow in the streets, this was probably the better choice anyway. The fat tire bike handles mashed potato snow pretty well. This bike is slow, but I notice it is equally slow on both pavement and in snow. So it's a fairly consistent bike to ride speed-wise.

The first mile or so of the commute I was buzzing along at about a 7 mph average. Then I started to get slower, which I just assumed was me getting tired. By the time I reached the office, I could barely hold 5 mph, and that seemed like effort. Once I parked the bike I noticed that the rear tire was almost flat. Not flat enough for the rim to hit the pavement, but flat enough that when sitting on the bike the sidewalls would wrinkle. Well, that would explain why it was so hard to maintain any speed. Maybe I was getting tired, but I was probably tired from trying to ride a bike with a flat tire.

When I bought my fat tire bike in 2019 I had it converted to tubeless tires. I had heard that in addition to significant weight savings without the fat-tire inner tubes, it also makes your tires much more flat resistant. Well, I'm not sure I buy into that second argument. I have had more flats on this bike than I have on all my other bikes combined during the same time period. Considering how little I actually ride this bike (1458 miles on it in seven years) that's a very high flat-to-mile ratio. It's not just the same tire every time, either. I can never find anything in the tire that would cause a puncture. I just reinflate them and they seem to hold air again for a while. Every fall I make sure to add more tire sealant in preparation for the winter, so it shouldn't be that the sealant is drying out.

So before I head home tonight I'm going to have to try and get the tire to hold some more air. Dealing with this all the time doesn't increase my liking of the fat bike.