A bit of bad news today: my bike is out of action for a few weeks.
I usually keep my bike in the garage, in front of my car. We have a 2-by-4 on the ground to keep the car going too far and hitting the bike, but a normally-careful teen driver in our household came in too fast and went over the wood and plowed into my bike, pinning the wheel against the small curb in our garage. I was in my home office when I heard the crash, and I initially thought he just knocked the bike over, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wheel was “tacoed”, which means bent in the shape of a taco.
I took the wheel to the bicycle shop and they said it was beyond repair and unfortunately they wouldn’t have any replacement wheels for two months. 😮 If you didn’t know, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a huge demand for bicycles and subsequent shortage available bikes. And that shortage also extends to bicycle parts. Luckily I was able to find a rim on Ebay that appears to have the same dimensions as my damaged one, so I am hoping it will be any easy swap. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it won’t arrive for another week-and-a-half, which means no evening bicycle rides for a while. 😞
Still, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge (nor expensive) deal. And it’s the first damage that my 20-year-old bicycle has suffered, so I should consider myself fortunate!