Bad bad bopping spokes

Hello, my bicycling minions.

Today was a first in my bicycle handbook, and a terrible first indeed. Like the first christmas you realize  Santa is actually your mother and an embarrassing facial hair thing.

Yes. I broke a spoke. My easton wheels now fill me with negative emotions such as terror, horror, nightsweats, and hallucinations.

I began the day at the buttcrack of dawn, joining the naples velo crew. We were to go peel around Olde Naples at breakneck speeds, head east back towards the Gerrity palace, and then loop up to Bonita and back to the Naples Cyclery for the Tour. And a cookie, for the weak and gluten tolerant.

The mornings in South Florida are not nice so much as they are bearable, but next to the prospect of going out riding during the heat of day, they seem comparatively divine. After 8 AM, Naples becomes a bog.

I am saying this as a preface to my woe; the group ride split up/I was dropped and humiliated don't look at me after about two hours. Me and my new buddies Leslie and Kurt decided to make a Walgreens stop (GATORADE!!!!!! I'm plugging Gatorade.) and then they headed back to the shop to watch Peter Sagan's butt menacing all the civilized world in full HD. I still needed another hour and a half before I reached my 3.5 hour quota....and so on I went. Into the bog.

I think the sound is the weirdest part about riding in naples--not because it's trafficky, but because it's just Naples. It's a combination of weird bugs shrieking and elderly drivers laying on their horns when they notice a bicycle in/on/near the street. I went along at a modest clip, as my soul had just been thoroughly crushed.

 Then--! suddenly! my tire was trying to make out with my fork! LIKE GROSS PDA MUCH. So I stopped, cursed my life, and noticed a spoke dangling from the hub, cleanly cut from the little indenture at the rim side. WHY. WHY DO TINY NINJA SWORDSMEN CURSE ME.

So then I sat there. HM. I said. How convenient for this to happen when I still need to put thirty minutes in. Is the world convinced to see this lizard fail? Maybe. I took off my shoes and resolved to walk to the nearest bike store...five miles south.

But I then realized that Don Pedro was more gimped than I had guessed at first measure! I couldn't just roll the bike next to me, it was too out of true. So i picked him up and saddled him over my shoulder, in the style of firefighters rescuing children, or a sack of potatoes. And so it began.

Just kidding, that got old after like three squares of concrete. I got out my phone and called my mother.

"MOM PICK ME UP," quoth the lizard.

"Oh dear, we're already to the Charlotte airport...."

Ironic, because it was due to the braininess of my little sister, also called Charlotte, that the pair were in the car speeding off toward Gainesville being wooed by the Gators. I needed a new plan.

"I AM HANGING UP, MOTHER." Lizard resolve, level nine.

I called my dad. He did not answer.

"I will just call my friends!" I said. I looked at my phone. I looked up at the sun. I looked back at my phone. I dialed my father a second time.

"Dad," I said "Can you come pick me up?"

"I gotta jump in the shower!"

I could not respond to this, and so resolved to die on the side of the road. But wait! There's more!


This is the moment a nice woman named Tina rode up next to me and took pity on my plight. She called up her husband (I think....?!), Mark, and bade him come collect the sad little creature she had found. And come he did, with his Ford F-150. It was even white.


 I was like, "you are my knight in shining Ford F-150!" and Tina was all "BACK UP OFF MY MAN." 


Just kidding, that didn't really happen.


So that is how I ended up barefoot in the truck of a total stranger. Um. See, my thing is, how can I trust these wheels again!? When it really comes down to it...and the sizable real estate that is my butt is balancing on my 15lb machine...they could just POP OFF. When that day comes....I will tell you all of my asphalt facial. 


UNTIL SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS TO ME,


adieu.