Strangest thing pulled out of your spokes
 

Last night i was riding up a hill when i heard spokes 'tinging'. I thought it was because i was pouring so many watts into them. I pulled over when it was safe to do so and checked each spoke to make sure i hadn't broken any. They were fine and i didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Then sometime later in my commute, quite later, something got sucked into my spokes and i had to stop quick. This is what i found:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...e/P6250049.jpg

The coiled part was wrapped around the axle right between the dropout and the wheel. It was coiled tightly i uncoiled it removing it. The long part had been sucked into the spokes.

It is fairly thick metal slightly thicker than coat hanger wire and somewhat more malleable. What it is, and how on earth it got into my spokes is a complete mystery to me.

This type of stuff gets into the spokes when you run over one side of it and it flings it up and into the spokes. I do it all the time with branches on the trail. I took out some spokes when a larger branch flung up this way.

geesh, where are you riding that you get weird stuff in your spokes, nothing too strange here i did have to take a bee off of my spokes one day after riding home

I've had some pretty sizable chunks of road get lodged between the tire and the fender on my bike a few times. Its the same end result, loud scheeching or rubbing noise and you pull over and go "Damn how did this get in here?"

i tend to avoid objects in the road that may get stuck or caught in the moving parts, kind of dangerous especially on a fixed

It's always a bit of a thrill when a little piece of gravel goes between the wheel and the fender- zzzziiipppp, and by the time I realize what it was, it's gone.

looks like aluminum. May used in fencing.

I usually find earthworm pieces thrown about my spokes/hub the morning after a good spring rain shower. It's actually pretty gross.

Weirdest thing I've found is a slice of pizza.

Not mine but.....

http://picasaweb.google.com/dbiked/B...ey=iOs1rM3MJzo

Damn!

Squirrels are being hired by cagers to do their dirty work.

squirrel intestine. After processing thru chainrings/chain. Alot nasty.

edit: Wow! Didn't see that prior post about the bike/brother/squirrel encounter!

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...e/P6250049.jpg





what you've got there is a peice of heavy guage aluminum wire used for training bonsai limbs to do your bidding. you could get all artsy and make some designer spoke bonsai's with it:)

1) Freind's foot,during polo.

2) Flyer for bike porn(actual porn) after leaving a bar.

I tend to think of "bike porn" as good looking bikes... so what the heck is (actual porn) with bikes??? Naked people making love to a bicycle???

Stripped bikes in "compromising" positions??

My U-lock, after the bungee gave way. Of course it was not exactly pulled out of the spokes; rather, it pulled out a bunch of spokes.

Paul

That bit of wire you have there is probably what's left over from a power pole ground. Crews are pretty good about picking up their scraps, but pobody's nerfect.

Couple of years ago, I was 88 miles into a century, and I ran over a scrap of television cable that was lying across the roadside... Didn't even think about it... Until it flipped up into my front wheel, spun 'round & 'round, and the exposed foil shield on one end of it sliced me across my right wrist. I brushed the wire aside, and it fell in the clear... I kept going.

Few minutes later, I noticed that my right glove was squishy-wet. I looked at it... yup, soaked with blood. That scrap of wire had nicked a vein. It wasn't a gusher, but it was bleeding pretty steady. I stopped and rooted around in my rack duffel. I found a plastic grocery bag, which I tied around my wrist...

... And finished my ride. Way I figured, It'd take me at least another ten miles to get to medical help, so why not finish the century? So, 105 miles all up, toss on a pair of jeans and a clean shirt, drive to the Urgent Care Clinic, couple of stitches, and ba-da-boom, back home to eat something good and peruse the newspaper.

Doctor yelled at me about my nonchalance, but he wasn't a cyclist... his opinion didn't count.

The moral? Watch out for harmless looking scraps of wire... they bite.

Youch!

I had a similar experience with baby bunny, but with steel forks, so failure was not catastrophic (for me at least). No comment on the bunny.

YES!!! I had that happen once when I was very young!!! (The memory just rushed back to the front of my mind from the massive pile of junk it has been under for the past 20 years...lol) I see a wasp flying toward me and it timed it perfectly, attempting to fly through the spokes. All I hear is *ping* and I'm like, "SWEET!!!" lol I quickly turn around to find the wasp cut in half on the sidewalk! lol

Hey...it's the little things in life...

Just a warning: Don't run over tumbleweeds... as inviting as they are when they're crossing your path, they'll get caught in your rear der, chain and spokes. I kill 'em in my truck, but avoid them like the plague on the bike.

I had a rabbit jump into my wheel once. He didn't make it though

Same thing happened to me with a squirrel, except the squirrel bounced off and ran back up the nearest tree. Only thing that ever gets caught in my spokes is the occasional leaf and twig.

Yup bingo i think. Someone at work suggested it... it's that stuff chainlink fence is made of. I really shoulda put something in that photo for scale it's a long piece.

Not in the spokes per se, but a couple of weeks ago I was picking up a couple of sodas from the Walgreens a few blocks from my house at the behest of a lazy roommate who'd rather wait the hour it takes me to ride home from work than walk to get them himself. Anyways, I didn't have a way to carry them short of trying to bungee four bottles of soda onto a rack with only two cords, so I figured "what the hell, I used to bike home from the store with bags of stuff when I was a kid, shouldn't be a big deal.

Well I forgot that the bars on my mountain bike as a kid are wayyyy wider than the drops on my bike now, and sure enough, about halfway through the first crank revolution to get me going the front wheel stops dead and sodas roll out onto the ground. At first I figured I'd just caught the bag in the spokes, but I realized that there were three bottles on the ground, and one wedged somehow between the fork and the spokes of the wheel, stuck so hard I couldn't get it out without draining the bottle to collapse it some. Well, I was awfully thirsty, so I ended up shouldering the bike back home and having the roommate help me tilt the bike so I could pour my delicious ruby red squirt into a glass before removing it.

I did run over a squirrel a while back on the bike path at night, but he was nice enough to die on the ground and not get caught in the spokes.