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@KelOnWheels 28300 wrote:

That sounds like something that would fit my budget

The trick is to make sure said wheelsmith does the truing before you give him the beer.

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@KelOnWheels 28272 wrote:

So here’s a dumb question, how do you tell if a wheel needs truing?

Answer: because you’ve been riding on it. Seriously, with enough miles, all wheels get out of true, and they all need to be periodically trued up. It is a maintenance thing like changing oil in a car. This is especially true with new wheels.

People who own truing stands have been known to be susceptible to being plied with a 6-pack of fine beer in exchange for wheel truing. That’s just what I’ve heard.

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@Dirt 28253 wrote:

From the “don’t try this at home” file….

What you see here is a “custom 29 spoke” wheel (There are actually 32 spokes, but 3 are broken) and a flat tire being ridden by some idiot on the W&OD. The bozo obviously got fed up with fixing flats that were caused by a poorly constructed rim, so he decided to ride home. Numerous people that he passed asked if he had noticed that his rear tire was flat. He made some sarcastic comment with a charming smile to show that he was aware and was just joking around. After riding about 8 miles home on this poor, abused wheel, he found that the fridge was empty and he had nothing for dinner. He then got back on the bike and rode 3 miles to a local restaurant where he got dinner before riding home. The bozo in question at least had the wisdom to make that the last ride ever for that wheel.

Don’t be a bozo.

That bozo has a beer-bottle-opener bolted to his bike, if that is at all indicative of anything.

Further, that bozo very likely had other bikes in his stable to ride 3 miles to the restaurant…why wouldn’t he use one of them?

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@mstone 28250 wrote:

If you’re not the size of a pro racer, you should get real wheels, not those cute little decorative ones. 😎

I concur. At my weight (*cough-mumble-let’s just say over 225-cough-mumble*), I actually ride a 36h rear wheel! I’d rather have a wheel that lasts a long time than save a few grams. Actually, more people should ride 36h rear wheels

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@Certifried 28240 wrote:

thanks all! Some great suggestions, now I can stress a little less.

They’re Bontrager Race wheels with 24 spokes. The wheel isn’t really rubbing at all on the brakes, just a tiny bit maybe. I do have a park tool with a spoke wrench, but think I’ll leave it alone for now as I’ve never trued a wheel. If it starts rubbing real bad or getting worse, I’ll attempt to true it up. If that fails, I’ll just walk it, call a taxi, or make my son come out and get me (he’d have to miss work, so that’s a last option).

I’m going to see how the time works out before I decide what to do. If I get out of work early, I can make it to Proteus with enough time for them to fix it. If I’m running late, I’ll just ride the Metro home, which would probably end up taking about as much time as the ride home anyways. The real concern was just whether the wheel could possibly collapse on me or not. Oddly enough, for all the years I rode back in the early 2000s and the few hundred miles since I started cycling recently, I’ve only had 1 other spoke break. It was the rear wheel on this bike about 200 yards from home. I’m not really liking how fragile these Bontragers seem to be (yeah, yeah, it can’t be my 210 pound ass, it’s gotta be the wheels!)

Since they are nicer wheels, when Proteus replaces the spoke and trues the wheel, you may want to insist they use a tensiometer to check tension on all of the spokes.

I am a big fan of using a tensiometer; it is really not that hard to do, and ever since I started building wheels I’ve come to understand how important using one is to building and maintaining true and strong wheels. I know that many will say you can get pretty close using “feel”, and while you can certainly locate very looseor very tight spokes with your fingers, human sensory accuracy is too limited to get the spoke tensions even enough (See the “Just Noticeable Difference”). To produce a truly strong wheel that will stay that way for a long time, the spoke tensions need to be within a few (30 or so max) kilograms force (Kfg) of each other, and this is simply not achievable without a tensiometer.

The downside is that Proteus may charge you more for truing with a tensiometer; you may not be interested in paying that (especially since this wheel may be on the way out) so check with them first. If you bought the bike/wheels from them they ought to give you a break.

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@Certifried 28220 wrote:

Snapped a spoke this morning after hitting a very large and very hidden (full of water lol) pot-hole. Hurt my arms from hitting it so hard! It was at the bottom of this dip in the road, and as soon as I stood up to “power” (I use that term loosely when describing my cycling) up the hill… TWANG! (front spoke)

Luckily, I was within a few miles of the New Carrollton metro where I catch my bus to Bowie, so limped there OK. The 3.5 mile ride from Bowie Park-n-Ride lot to my work was OK, but the wheel is definitely out of true. Not bad enough to rub the brakes much, but it’s wobbly, and that scares me going down hills or approaching any speeds over about 15mph.

I’m sort of stranded out here where I work, I’ll have to at least ride the 3.5 miles back to the Bowie P-n-R lot. From there I catch my bus to New Carrollton metro. My options are wide open from there, Metro home, mix of metro/cycling, etc. Proteus bikes is an 8 mile ride from New Carrollton. Which is what I’m thinking, but I’m just not sure how many miles I’ll get out of the rim like this. Will it waffle on me? Can I do more damage? Will I die?

I’ve ridden ~20 miles before on wheels with broken spokes; I think you’ll be ok to do the 3.5 to PnR lot + 8 miles to Proteus.

The long-term outlook for the wheel is doubtful. I once went over a curb at the bottom of a hill (unexpected turn…fun!) and really hit the front wheel particularly hard. Although the wheel didn’t show any signs of damage at the time, I would replace 6 spokes over the next 3 months (and not the same spoke repeatedly, but at all different points around the wheel) before calling it quits on that wheel and getting a new one. Catastrophic wheel damage is pretty bad; if I were you, when you get the spoke replaced, buy 2-3 extras to keep with you so you don’t get stranded. You’re lucky in that it is the front wheel so spokes are the same length on either side. If you find yourself replacing spokes over and over, you’ll know it is time for a new wheel

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I’m in.

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@jnva 28051 wrote:

Here’s a perfect example of Helpy McHelperton trying to do good, but it ends up bad.

http://vienna.patch.com/articles/cyclist-hit-by-car-near-w-od-trail

“A driver heading northbound on Park Street SE stopped to allow the cyclist, who did not adhere to the stop sign, to cross the street, police said.”

Yep. I would bet heavily that the unwritten context of the story is that the cyclist felt compelled by driver’s “courtesy” to proceed through the intersection without stopping.

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@rcannon100 27979 wrote:

Never understood the point of fenders. You are going to get wet. Just give into the dark side and enjoy it!

I used to agree with this but I’m starting to change my mind. Fenders are the difference between, “Oh, my feet are wet” and “Oh, there’s a pool party in my shoes and my feet are invited!” I just wish SKS made RaceBlades (the quick detach ones) that covered 32mm tires (they max out at 23mm), because I don’t like the look of fenders on a cross bike and don’t want to have them on ALL the time.

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@GuyContinental 27927 wrote:

Dang if I didn’t have a really close one of these yesterday just hours after chatting with ya’all about it- Van Buren St in Herndon (2 lanes each way, bike specific light, usually not a big deal) For once there was plenty of traffic so came to a complete stop- oncoming traffic in lane 1 (a big SUV driven by a small lady) stops at the crosswalk and waves me on despite her ROW, I see more SUV monsters in lane 2-4 so smile, point to her green and wave her on- at which point a rider from behind me (nice bike, no helmet, no shirt, double ear-bud Fred) jets into the intersection, oblivious to SUV in ln 2, I screamed something along the lines of holysh*&hedoesn’tseeyou and Fred nearly goes down standing on his brakes as Lane 2 SUV makes an emergency stop. Fred recovers, stumbles through the intersection and goes on his merry melanoma way. Lots of honking follows- Lane 1/2 are now stopped and clearly don’t know what to do now… everyone is gesturing for me to go but lanes 3/4 aren’t clear and hell if I’m going out there. Eventually, I fully unclip put both feet on the ground, back up on the sidewalk cutout, make lots of eye contact, smile, point at the stale green and wave them through.

Wow this was some kind of Atomic Helpy Helperton Clusterf%&k!

I too had an encounter on the MVT crossing the Reagan Airport entry ramp onto GWP not long after this discussion with a Level 5 Helpy — a truly magnificent specimen — giving me the Super Mega Donkey Power Two-Handed Wave-Through (which I have never seen before).

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@rsewell19 27871 wrote:

I am going to use “tragicomic melodrama” from now on… love it… it will replace my “Catastraphuck” from now on!

It’s eight syllables in two words…it does have a kind of cadence to it that is pleasing in a somewhat disjointed way

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@Jason 27856 wrote:

Glad you are ok! I can see this easily happening to me, as I cross the GW parkway across from the Arlington Cemetary twice a day. On the way home in particular, one car slows down/stops; thus lulling you into a false sense of safety, and another car slows down, then rockets past in the far lane.

See? It’s Helpy, just waiting to strike.

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@GuyContinental 27852 wrote:

Glad that you are OK!

One that I’m seeing (or paying attention to) more and more is the behavior of follow-up riders/runners after a car has waved me through one of these intersections. It’s a total crapshoot if the car intended to stop for one ped or many, especially given that they have already treated the intersection as a 4-way stop- reasonably, they yielded to me and now expect the next crosser to yeild to them. When that doesn’t happen, bad things tend to…

#1 Be predicable. #2 When in doubt, yeild and make eye contact and STILL assume the worst

I have a different take on this scenario. Too many times I have declined to be that “follow-up” rider and have treated the crossing as a four way stop, only to have the hackneyed and farcical “Alphonse and Gaston” scene play out in slow-motion as my stomach begins to turn. The drivers are waving me through, I’m waving them through. THEY’RE insisting, now I’M insisting. Meanwhile, another rider has come up from behind and, with a snort, bypassed the entire tragicomic melodrama that we have decided to stage, and has simply blown through the intersection. Finally either I or the drivers have to relent and accept the others’ courtesy. As I’m fumbling, cursing and clipping in, I’m sure all involved are thinking, “geez, it would have saved me time if you had just GONE!”

So now, if I see drivers stopped, with a healthy dose of good judgement and discretion, if I can follow-up and save everyone some time, I do. I figure some assertiveness just expedites the whole exchange.

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@rsewell19 27849 wrote:

So I made the cardinal mistake this morning of becoming too relaxed about crossing an intersection when a driver waves you through…. I know I know! I generally ride on the roads and have become very strict about stopping at every light and stop sign, but on the trails I have become somewhat lazy as more drivers begin to yield to cyclists. This morning I was on the W&OD trail heading west towards the Great Falls crossing. A driver in the far lane began to slow dramatically as he approached the intersection, I also slowed to a near stop and assumed he had spotted me and was letting me through. I checked to see if drivers in the other direction were on the same page, but in this case he was the only driver on the road so I began to cross. It didn’t take long to realize he was not stopping but simply driving through the intersection at a reduced speed. I hammered the pedals, he finally noticed me and slammed on his brakes and a collision was narrowly avoided. In refection he had not waved me through at all, and I simply assumed his slowing was my cue to cross…stupid mistake. As he eventually spotted me in his path and slammed on his brakes I realized he was not looking at traffic at all, but more likely looking for an intersection or street signs, thus his slowing. he was probably not even aware a bike path crossing was present. The point is (and made numerous times here) that the “waving through” of cyclists is a slippery slope, one I gambled with today and nearly lost.

While this guy was not technically one (since he was not actually waving you through), the driver who eagerly goes WAY out of his way to “wave you through” the intersection is a classification of driver I like to refer to as “Helpy Helperton”. Helpy is particularly devious as he uses trickery, deception and unpredictability in his attacks, often lulling cyclists with a sense of overflowing courtesy or panicking them with uncertainty. Once the cyclist is caught hesitating, unsure of whether to start or stop, Helpy pounces, often using another unwitting motorist to do his bidding.

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@Dirt 27828 wrote:

Bummer that we can’t even sign it.

Sez who? Spraypaint will stick to darn-near anything.

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