Reasons to ride fixed #1357
Apr.17, 2008, filed under Miscellany
This morning, while riding to work, I was coming up Forth Valley towards the turning for Melville Street and had to stop because the bus in front of me had stopped.
I squeezed the front brake. Nothing. I squeezed it again, brain disengaging into WTF mode. Still nothing.
Frantically pumping the front brake lever I went into fixed-gear override and skidded the bike to slow down, finally putting my feet on the ground to keep the machine upright as I wrestled it to a stop. Courier I ain’t. Luckily I’m a consistent skidder.
Can we see the problem boys and girls?
I changed the brake pads a month ago and it has been fine since then. I can’t for the life of me figure out where in the hell that pad went. The rotation of the wheel should have forced it against the front of the shoe, and the retaining pin was definitely properly in place. I know how to fit brake pads. Not only that but I’d used the brakes already on the ride, and they’d been working. Somewhere between the descent on Crewe Road South and the Forth Valley traffic blockade, my offside front brake pad went missing.
Buggered if I know what happened to it. Good job you don’t need brakes to stop a fixed, though.
Yes, I do have a rear brake on that bike, but I use it so rarely the damn thing had seized so that wasn’t working either.
Leave a Reply
-
Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
