Poor Ruby

Well yesterday was supposed to be a fun easy road spin. And it was for the first 19 miles of my 20 mile loop, and then it happened. I was maliciously attacked by a vagrant grocery sack less than a mile from my house. It came from nowhere, assaulted my baby and then was gone like the wind.

I saw it, I thought I had avoided it, but somehow it grabbed hold of my rear cog and the havoc that ensued was not pretty. The chain skipped, then wheel skid to a stop and I looked down at my rear wheel to see a twisted bunch of metal.

I pulled the offending sack out, but the damage was done.

The derailler hanger was twisted and snapped.
The rear derailler cable and housing destroyed.
The Dura Ace derailler twisted beyond repair.
The hub in the rear wheel chewed up.
The chain literally twisted into a 90 degree angle.

It was matted up so much that I couldn't even attempt to untangle it. I simply shouldered the bike and began the long walk home. I was pretty steamed as I added up the costs in my head wondering how so much damage could come from one stupid garbage sack.

Ugh.

The chainstays were scratched (a concerning issue for a full carbon frame), but don't appear to be anything but cosmetic. I pulled the cassette, which allowed me to get the twisted hunk of metal that used to be a Dura Ace chain off. It went straight to the garbage. I tried to salvage the rear derailler, but to no avail. It was done too. The rear wheel suffered damage to a couple of spokes and to the area where the spokes mount to the hub. Unbelievable.

See if you can pick out the spot on the speed chart below where it happened. I'll give you three tries.


Yep that would be 15mph to 0 in the blink of an eye. Tire locked up completely before I could even reach for the brakes.

The good news is that all this stuff is replaceable with money, which means it isn't much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. It could have been a whole lot worse had it caused me to wreck considering the small amount of error you have in the bike lane riding next to rapidly moving traffic.

So yeah I'm pissed, but she can be rebuilt. I have the technology. Parts are on order, Ruby will be revived.