Broken parts. KA-CHING.

I can do long rides at half way technical places and get by with no mechanicals.
I go to Cedarville, the easiest park I know of in MD and I break my rear derailer.
Now that I think about it, most of my mechanicals have happened at Cedarville.

I wanted an easy ride last night, so Cedarville was my pick.
Jack the seatpost up, for some easy spinning around the paths.
No logs, no hills.
Kinda boring but I had the ipod with some tunes going.

I’ve been out about an hour and am taking a turn pretty fast on some doubletrack.
Its a little muddy so I get ready for and expect the rear wheel to drift over in the turn.
It slides right over to the edge of the trail and smacks the rear-d into the end of topped off tree.
I’m not sure what happened at first. I thought I had driven a branch into the spokes.
I’m a little relieved when I see all the spokes are were they belong but then I see the rear-d.
First thing I think about is the money.
Shit.
Sram-x9=$70.00
I pull the chain off and consider rigging it into a single speed to get back but I’ve never done that before and don’t wanna experiment with daylight starting to fade.
So I push the bike up to the camp grounds which I was real close to and hit the pavement back to the trailhead.
Walk the ascents and use the bike like a big scooter on the flats.
My tip of the day, if your trying to scoot along on your bike.
Lower the seat.

I stole the rear-d, an x-7 off of my 26"er. I’ll rig that on temporarily and see how it works.
The x7’s are $30.00 cheaper.
If I don’t notice a big difference I’ll just get one of those.
I also wanna know what’s with the derailer hanger. Aren’t those supposed to break off instead of mangling up the rear-d.
To add insult to injury, the hanger did bend all to shit, without breaking. So I’ll need a new hanger also.


It must be the trail gods way of punishing me for slacking and riding an easy trail tonight.

Seeyall