My bike is a piece of shit. And its going to be the death of me.
I ride it into the ground, grinding it through the chinook mud and salty streets until everthing metal is an unnatural shade of orange.
Its deterioration has been accelerating. The back brake now works intermittently. The shifting has developed a delay. And the chain slips off at the worst of times.
Its the chain that's going to kill me.
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What's amazing is the intelligence with which it slips off. It never slips off on an empty side street or in a back alley. But you get me crossing something with four lanes in rush hour and its off like a banana on butter. Maybe the mixture of road salt and tar has created an environment conducive to intelligent derailers.
This morning it slipped off in the middle of 14th Street as I was trying to turn left.
How hopeless you feel, stuck in the middle of an icy intersection with an SUV barreling down on you at 50 clicks.
And there's really nothing you can do. You get off your bike. Cringe. And hope he can stop.
Luckily he did. This time.
