I feel that myself and this road biking lark are not going to be happy bedfellows. I've just had what felt like a near death experience on a dead-straight piece of tarmac. WTF is that all about? I've only had the road bike a few weeks!
Riding downhill at a fair old speed this morning, I noticed a lot of building rubble in the road further up. Bricks and stuff that must have fallen off a skip lorry or summink. As I get closer, the obligatory white-van-man comes absolutely battering past me and just runs straight over all the crap in the road, while right along-side me.
This results in him kicking up a good few big chunks of concrete and house-bricks from under his tyres, right in my direction!!
I absolutely **** myself! (I'll avoid puns about bricking it). Anyway.... Somehow they managed to miss my head and important bits, but a gert big piece of concrete slams right into the back wheel, gets caught up, then disappears underneath the rim. The result being (bearing in mind I'm doing around 30mph here) the tyre sidewall being ripped wide open! Then as the now tyre-less rim rolls over the whopping big piece of concrete the wheel completely pringles. The now crisp-shaped rim then slams straight into the rear brake caliper, locking the back wheel.
By some miracle I managed to keep it upright. God knows how! It was all over the **** place!!! It goes without saying that the back wheel is completely spangled. Not had chance to inspect for any damage to the frame etc
Road bikes? You can effing keep them! Its on its way when its fixed up. Back to the longer off-road commute for me. At least I'll stay alive.
)
I feel left out!
