My son did that this past Friday. Following too closely down a hill and the car
in front braked, so he swerved right and into a patch of loose gravel. Road
Rash, a taco'd rear wheel, bent frame and broken seat. At least he's ambulatory,
if not wiser.

I was thinking of resurrecting it for his little sister, but she likes her pink
and purple monster too much to leave it for black.

Fortunately for us all, DtB and my son were not hit by cars as they traversed
the asphalt ribbon.

mIke

--- On Tue, 5/13/08, dennisthebald <dennisthebald@...> wrote:
I had a wheel failure on the way in this morning. While I was moving
towards the left turn lane at the intersection of two three laners.
Had to pick it up and carry it off, then call for air support.

I broke some spokes several months ago, I bought some new ones and
fully intended to lace 'em in one of these days. In the meantime I
borrowed the wheel off of one of my kids' bikes (the one off to
college). I didn't adjust the derailliuer and I just unhooked the
rear brake as it was only a temporary thing. The wheel didn't have
one of those nifty little plastic spoke protectors and I wasn't about
to pull the cassette off to put one on, not for the short time that I
was gonna be using this strange stuff - it was supposed to be a pretty
brief affair.

Now I gotta replace spokes on both wheels.
How long can you borrow parts off of one bike before they're really
stolen? I'm thinking that infernal gearing is the answer on my daily
dose, so much less adjusting and stuff, maybe 8-in-the-hub and a
schlumpf up front. And since the chain would always be on the same
path cover that sucker completely up, route it internally through the
boom - yeah now you're talking.