At 6:30 my wife wakes me up, she wants to go to a restaurant kinda mid-town for breakfast, by bicycle, so we load up and go, she wanted to get a couple of things for her bike, so I suggested MEC at King and Spadina. Since we were on Spadina already, and it was only about 4km.

We got a mirror for her bike, and new pedals since the one pedal on there has blown bearings, so we picked up a set of $8 BMX pedals, pedal wrench, a little wrench/tire lever combination made for bikes with nutted wheels (her rear wheel is nutted) front wheel has quick release. Now a streetcar track contains a depressed space beside the rail, for the wheel flange to go into, this is a little over an inch and a half wide. Ideally you cross the tracks at a 90 degree angle, if you can't then you have to be over 45 degrees, or it will grab your wheel.

I have known this for a while, and so does she, but I think she forgot, to make a left hand turn on a street with tracks you box the corner, go through the intersection, then turn your back end and go through the intersection the other way. She crossed the track parallel, it grabbed the front wheel, did the most amazing dance move (on a bicycle no less), I thought she was going to recover, uh, no, down she went. Bruised elbow, bruised leg, a couple of scrapes, bike is OK, we were able to ride to the subway, and head home.

As for the pedals, I got the funky one replaced, the other needs some penetrating oil.