Out on the bike this morning, only half an hour into a precious weekend morning ride, I managed to batter the rear end with some nice chunky lumps of rock. This resulted in an expensive sounding bang and knackered shifting due, on closer inspection, to a slightly wonky-looking rear mech. After fiddling a bit and completely failing to fix it, in a fit of pique I gave it a good solid yank, which I immediately regretted. There was a horrible grating, crunching noise and things ended up even wonkier than before. Assuming that I’d have to freewheel back home I got back on the bike and rolled off. A couple of experimental pedal stokes later however, and I discovered that my angry mistreatment of the derailleur had somehow managed to knock it back in to place. Everything was working again, nothing was slipping or rattling, and gear shifts were suspiciously smooth and reliable. I carried on with my ride.

It was only on the second to last hill that I noticed that I couldn’t shift onto the top sprocket. With my brute-force trailside repair I had miraculously managed to pull the gear cable out just far enough that the bent mech shifted perfectly across 9 out of the 10 cogs. What are the chances of that? I now fully expect something horribly unlucky to occur in the next few days to balance things out.

Anyone else got stories of random bike-ride associated good luck?