Aww, not again!

Remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer tells the gang that if you ever happen to meet a proctologist at a party, don't walk away?  He says proctologists "usually have a very good sense of humor...See, no one wants to admit to them that they stuck something up there. Never! It's always an accident.  Every proctologist story ends in the same way:  'It was a million to one shot, Doc. Million to one.'"

Remember that?  Well, I may be setting myself up to be the star in one of those stories.  

Last night Mags wanted me to go on a night ride with her and her friends.  I don’t understand the logic behind going for a night ride this close to the summer solstice.  I mean, people in Alaska are starting baseball games at midnight just because they have the daylight to do it.  I could understand a night ride if I lived in Phoenix (does anybody really live in Phoenix, or do they just exist?), but not in Utah.

But I digress.  You want to know how I might find myself saying “It was a million to one shot, Doc”, not why I think summertime rides should be done in the daylight, nor how I think the Phoenix is a colossal suburban mistake.  

So, I rode my mountain bike to work yesterday. That way I could ride from my office to catch the train to Ogden and meet Mags and her friends in the evening.  On my way in to work I started to hear a little creak coming from my seat post.  I didn’t think much of it, only that I should get more of that special carbon fiber grip paste on my fancy new carbon fiber seat post.  I forgot about it as soon as I got to work.  

Later in the afternoon a co-worker was ribbing me about my dirty bike, in light of the recent brouhaha about bikes in cubicles at my office. I looked at my bike, flicked off a piece of mud left over from the race in Deer Valley, nearly two weeks ago, and saw this:

There’s no question as to what I’m going to do about it.  I’ve cracked enough frames to have memorized Gary Fisher’s warranty process.  But I do have a few questions.  Such as, why do I continue to rely on these cheaply made Taiwanese aluminum frames?  

And more importantly, do I dare keep riding my cracked frame in the meantime?  How confident can I be descending on a bike that could, at any moment, lose seat and post completely, leaving me with nothing but a jagged tube upon which to rest my hiney?  

I can hear the JRA story now.  I’d be sitting there in the doctor’s office, pleading with him to believe me.  “It was a million to one shot, Doc.  A million to one.”