Rough day...

Today I had hoped to be able to post about a wonderful ride with my riding buddies, but alas, it was not meant to be.

10 kms into the ride I look down to see my front wheel 'snaking' all over the place. I quickly pulled over and realised that a spoke had popped on my Fulcrum 7 front wheel. And as we all know, these pre-built wheelsets with low spoke counts are fine until you break a spoke - the high spoke tension wreaks havoc with things, making the wheel almost unrideable.

So I slowly rode home and realised that I did not have an inner tube mounted on my spare wheelset. I quickly transferred the inner tube from the wrecked Fulcrum, and proceeded to pump up the wheel... and, due to my haste, pulled out the valve from the tube. After muttering a bit under my breath, I understood that this was a sign of displeasure from the cycling gods, took the hint and abandoned the day's ride.

Must admit that this decision was easy, given that I did not have a replacement inner tube, and riding a front wheel without an inner tube is... challenging.

A quick trip to my local shop resulted in a fixed and perfectly true wheel.

Always a thing of beauty to behold.

And, as I was short of tubes and my clinchers are on their last legs, I stocked up on things.

Five Vittoria inner tubes (should not run out for a while now, I hope).
Two Vredestein Fiammante Duo Comp clinchers (Hhhmmmm).
A cassette tool and chain thingie. Hate to have a clean chain and dirty cogs...

Helping the economy...

The weather is turning bad. So I will have my espresso and then settle down to some maintenance, or rather tender loving care for my beloved ride.

So, in the end, the day was not a wash. Got to spend some quality time at the bike shop. Checked out all the new stuff. And will get to lavish much needed TLC on the wheels.

I will let you know what I think of these Vredesteins over the next few days. A bit curious really, as I have been a religiously orthodox Vittoria man for quite some time now. Any thoughts?