So 2014 is coming to an end. I kinda dig those few days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, just strolling around, visiting some friends and having a coffee on almost every corner. So I hit one of my favorite coffee spots, typically crowded by a couple style conscious bike enthusiasts. It’s fun to listen to their stories from a safe distance, you get the hot scene news in about a double espresso length and don’t need to weed through a million facebook posts to be up to date. That’s from march till september of course, the rest of the year is kinda low key.
Sometimes though, those lonely winter months make for some of the best stories ever. Like dis ride here a buddy of mine came by with while I had my end of the year coffee:
I’ll spare you my matt black ramblings and get straight to the point. Why is the chain missing? That’s why:
It was obvious within a second that this would be the story of the day. My buddy is a pretty relaxed guy, sometimes maybe a bit too relaxed cause he didn’t feel the need to take care of his chainring where 3 out of 5 bolts were missing for quite some time. So his post Christmas strolling lead to his chainring breaking and bending in a way I haven’t seen before:
He didn’t make a big fuss about it and just told me the story in his typical relaxed manner. While I was taking my pictures I thought to myself: ‘Man, I know a million fixed gear gangstas who would have used the oportunity to uplift their gangsta status to unbelievable heights’. It didn’t take too long for other people noticing the situation and this time I was confronted with one of those gangsta stories without my usual comfort distance. A voice behind my back informed us that the same thing has happened to him but since he was riding proper fixed gear style without any brakes at all it made his incident so much more hardcore of course. How come the cycling world is so full of people shoving those kinda stories in your face? Ah fuck it, I wasn’t in the mood to respond anyway but there was more to come. Someone had the perfect advice for loose or missing chainring bolts but before I hit you with that, please have another look and try to imagine the forces at work when this little misfortune happened:
Do you have any idea what that super duper fixed gear advice would be? Extra welding? Something involving super glue? New chainring bolts even? Out in the left field. Believe it or not, the number one gangsta advice for keeping your chainring in space is: Cable binders. Thats right, plastic fuckin cable binders, I’d just love to see that one, smartass..
But anyways, since this is the last post for 2014, I’d like to end it on a lighter note. First of all I’m happy that my buddy didn’t hurt himself, that’s probably also cause he’s ridin with Donatello:
You know you can’t go wrong with ridin with the turtles cause they always got your back!
But still, people, please tighten your bolts properly, exchange if necessary and no matter how badass you (think) you are, ride safe, stay healthy and make sure to celebrate!
That’s all folks, see ya in 2015.
Peace
Older, bolder, none the wiser. The experienced side of disridehere.