Rode Hard and Put Away Wet

I've been riding my bikes a lot so they've been taking some abuse and needing a lot of maintenance.  Now, up until the past week I had enjoyed some pretty good luck in terms of equipment issues (or lack thereof).  In fact I went something like 4 or 5 months without any flat tire issues which is just about unheard of if you are laying down the kind of miles I have been, (60 to 80 mountain miles per week).  But alas, all good things must come to an end.  Here are the issues that have surfaced in just the last couple weeks with my two main bikes:

• cut the sidewalls on 2 tires in 2 consecutive rides
• drive side bottom bracket bearing went bad
• rear brake lever developed a leak and is pulling air into the hydraulic system
• headset developed an annoying creak
• geared bike developed a clanking noise in the drive train

Support Your LBS?
I will save the solution to all these problems for a future post but I would like to take a minute to talk about local bike shops.  I've mentioned in previous posts that I buy a lot of bike parts from online retailers and from eBay and every now and then I feel a twinge of guilt for not supporting the local bike shops more.  The problem is that I have had mixed results.  Some of these shops have employees that are simply incapable of picking up on the fact that I am not the average Joe, (okay, that's confusing since my screen name here is AverageJoe, but you get what I'm saying).  I'm saying that I have developed some decent bike mechanic skills and some of these guys get it and some do not.  So the guys that don't get it talk down to me or feed me BS and don't seem to understand that I see their BS.  But, in a moment of weakness I tried a different bike shop and decided to drop BOTH of my bikes off to service some of the above problems.  What the heck, I'm a busy guy and this could save me some time.  Well, for one bike the kid just argued with me that I didn't really have a problem until I wheeled the bike out and loaded it back on the Jeep.  Like a dummy I brought the other bike in and left it there with instructions for them to diagnose and fix the clanky drive train.  He told me to pick it up on Wednesday and I thought that was not bad.  Well, I called yesterday to see if it would be ready be 4PM in case I could get out of work early for a ride and he said, "no, we meant next Wednesday, check your ticket."  Sure enough the ticket showed a week and half.  I said, screw that, and went and picked up my bike.

Henry's Bicycle Shop

So I resigned to fix the drive train myself and worked on the bike that night.  And I thought I had it fixed.  But when I hit the trail after work today the clanking noise was still there.  I rode along thinking about this and it finally occurred to me that I had not checked the cassette.  I stopped abruptly, hopped off my bike and checked the cassette and, sure enough, it was loose.  Real loose.  And cassettes require a special tool.  Riding on too far could cause more damage to my rear hub.  I thought about this for a minute while I rode on through the trails amid the insufferable clanking.  Henry's Bike Shop!  I read recently read that Henry's Bike Shop had re-opened.  Henry's is right off the White Clay Creek trail system in the Polly Drummond Hill shopping center.  Matt, the new proprietor, was there and he fixed me up real quick.  I told him I didn't have any cash (I left my wallet in my truck at the trail head).  Matt said, "don't worry about it man, this one's on the house."  We talked shop for a minute and I discussed some of the other ailments from the list above.  Matt had sound advice, made a lot of sense to me and he's won my business for life.  I am totally psyched to have found a bike wrench that I like and feel good about dropping my bike off.  I mean, he fixed the problem in like 90 seconds that the other bike shop said would take 1 1/2 weeks.  Awesome.  Matt and Henry's Bicycle Shop are, yes, exactly....totally gnarly dude.