No Clearance Clarence

So I’m back home from my trip to Savannah and all’s good, with the exception of my wounded bike. Getting to the end of my chores while watching my Raiders find a way to lose yet again, I finally took a look at her bent forks.

To best illustrate the damage done in my embarrasing and infuriating slow-speed collision with a double-parked minivan last Tuesday, take a look at the front wheel jammed against the bottom tube:

There used to be well more than an inch gap between the rubber and the frame. Now that’s been eliminated and instead  everything’s all jammed the hell up together. Such is what happens when 215 pounds of person and 25 pounds of bike plus some 10-plus pounds of backpack (I was carrying a company laptop and accessories) heading uphill collide at 3-4 mph with the ass of a stationery minivan.

I’m actually quite lucky the damage to Le Noir and to me wasn’t worse.

My chin is healing up in excess of my expectations, and fortunately my favorite online bike parts source, Nashbar.com, offers a threaded fork with a one-inch steerer tube in the length that I need, so I’ve gone ahead and ordered one up. Instead of my first-choice material of steel (yes, I’m old school) these new forks are carbon  but the price of $90 is right.

So for the next couple days I’ll be riding my Giant roadie — and whether I’m doing 3 mph or 30 you can bet I’ll be looking everywhere but down at the pavement wherever I’m at on the roads.

PS. In case you’re wondering why there’s no video of the mishap, I’m not entirely sorry to say that the back-up battery in the cam at the time had crapped out about half-way home and as I was rather pre-occupied with the upcoming trip and getting home and packed for it, I just kept on going along Jefferson Boulevard when I noticed it had failed, rather than stop and swap in a charged power source.

Besides, I figured it would be just another uneventful ride not worth recording anyway. Ha.

Had I captured it, it undoubtedly would have been an awesome POV of me making a crawling beeline upwards towards and into the butt of the vehicle looming ever larger in the frame until contact occured. Just as I had no choice but to write about it despite my utter embarrassment I would have had no choice but to post it.