February 19, 2011

The nightmare trip

Friday my family & I traveled from Santa Fe to Las Cruces so I could compete in the Presidents day duathlon. The trip was horrible.

I forgot my bike was on the roof when I went through the drive through of Chick-Fil-A & I ran my bike into the drive through over hang. My aero bars were bent & crooked, but surprisingly my bike still shifted ok.

20 miles south of Elephant Butte on I-25 the wind blew the front of my bike off my bike roof rack. My bike was flopping around the back of my mini-van like a wet flag. The strap that wraps around the rear wheel was the only thing keeping my bike from flying off the back of my van & becoming road kill. Although the rear wheel stayed strapped onto the mini-van the bike was still getting whipped around pretty badly by the wind & the speed of my van driving down the road. I took my bike on a test ride after wards & surprisingly it had minimal damage. I'll need to replace 2 water bottle holders ($12) & the front fork ($450), all things considered the damage could have been much worse.

Race morning I was unable to pump up my rear wheel because of part of my tire being damaged on one or both of the incidents the day before. I was able to pump the rear wheel up enough to race, but not nearly to the pressure needed to prevent excess rolling resistance.

With all that happened to my bike it should have been much worse. Thankfully I was still able to race. I'll post my race report tomorrow.

1 comment:

Del Duncan Photography said...

Wow! That's some insane bad luck. Why do trips turn into total disasters like that? I drove into my garage with our bikes attached once - snapped the rack, which then shattered my back windows. Scratched up the car a bit but not a dent to the bikes even though it had to be the handlebars that hit. Amazing how strong that carbon actually is.