On my way to work this morning, things started not feeling right and there were a couple weird noises. Long story short, I pull over, and my spindle is somewhat wobbly. I don't know if the bottom bracket loosened up, if I crushed a bearing, or what.

Anway, its obviously screwy and needs to be looked at. Problem is I just moved and don't know where all my tools are and my friend that I often borrow from is out of town...so I have to go to a shop to pay someone to take apart and mess with my baby.

So question one...where should I go? (downtown Manhattan) and two...can I ride there or might the wobble throw the chain and cause me to ride truly brakeless into the path of an oncoming garbage truck?

Oh, and three...any ideas what might be going on with it?

I've been riding this bike for about a year with no problem, and just a day or two ago, I pulled the back wheel out a bit as I seemed to have aquired a teany bit of chain slack. Might I have gone too tight and put too much tension on the spindle on the drive train side?

well if it's a newer cartridge, it's ****ed. It it's the older bearing and spindle it could just be an adjustment. Your lockring may have fallen off and things could have gone awol from there. Or depending on how bad it is none of the above matter except the first "you're ****ed" statement. I've mutilated some bottom brackets in my 10 months of riding. That too much tension thing shouldn't be a problem with a properly working BB. I can't really tell you if it's bad enough to throw the chain or not.

I've ridden with slightly loose spindles for awhile, but it does do a number on the BB. Never got bad enough to throw a chain. It wore out the races on the spindle and the cups, and I ended up just trowing in a cartridge BB.

I think you'd be OK for a little while, but use it as an excuse to find all of your tools ASAP.

For the record...its an old spindle and bearing BB, not a cartridge...no idea how old it is. It was on an old frame from the 70's I got nice and cheap, but the cranks were old stronglights with the ol skool french threadings and since I don't have a french sized crankpuller and since the BB seemed smoove as hell, I never bothered to open it up and investigate it too much.

So where can I go to get this looked at in Manhattan? My main concern being some jackass trying to use the TA crankpuller on my stronglights and stripping them. I have stopped more than a couple people from making that mistake at various LBS'. They look like they are the same size, but the thread pitch is different.