Broken Spoke Causes Quanah Parker Blading

Yesterday I figured out that the wobbling of my rear bike tire was caused by 2 broken spokes. I probably should have tried to figured out what was causing the wobbling earlier, because, apparently, continuing to ride on a wobbling tire likely does some serious damage to the rim that may not be fixable by simply replacing the broken spokes.

I don't know how many wobbly rides I've gone on. At least once on the River Legacy Mountain Bike Trail. One wobbly ride on the River Legacy Paved Trail. And at least 3 wobbly rides at Village Creek Natural Historic Area.

I finally grew concerned enough to look closer at the wobbly wheel when, when last ridden, the wobbliness seemed to be causing a sort of instability, similar to when a tire goes flat.

This rim has had spokes replaced before, and the wheel rim trued, at Bicycles, Inc. It was somewhat wobbly after that, so I was used to some measure of wobbliness. And then it got worse. And I continued to ignore it. I don't think it was trued correctly the last time.

Looking it up on the Internet I found a bike repair website with how-to videos. The how to replace the spoke video made it seem like the easiest thing in the world. For the rear wheel you have to remove the gear cassette. Again, easiest thing in the world.

That's easy for them to say, hard for me to do. It's like me telling someone, who has never made one, go ahead, making a website is the easiest thing to do, which it is, for me, due to having made one or two before.

The truing the wheel video admitted this was a bit more difficult. I knew I was out of my league at the remove the gear cassette part.

So, I've been up since a bit past 4 this morning. By the time the sun finally got up I hit the pool. Around noon I felt the need to be on wheels of the non-motorized sort. All I had available to me was my roller blades. I have not been on them in months. So, I motored down to Quanah Parker Park, that's the park closest to where I live, about 2 miles from here, put on my blades and bladed.

It took me about a mile to remember why this is not a favorite hot weather activity of mine. On a bike the rush of the air is cooling. Hiking there's a lot of shade and not as much exertion as it takes to roller blade. In other words I got a bit overheated. Several years ago I roller bladed to the end of the River Legacy Park Paved Trail, about 12 miles round trip. By the time I got to the end I was badly overheated. You see a lot of people overheating on that trail. It was a rough return that time. I've not been back on blades there since that incident.

As you can see in the picture above, it may be HOT, but it's nice and green. Which one would think would be cooling. But it's not. And it was very windy. Also not a big help with the cooling. So, I need to find new wheels, I don't think I'm going to be doing a lot of roller blading as the temperatures get ever hotter.