bridges (covered), seatposts (broken), and the Mennonite (bike mechanics)

Things that happened on my ride today:

1. Rode over (through?) a covered bridge...the first time I've done this on a bike, I think.

2. Narrowly avoided serious injury on (in?) said covered bridge.

3. About 50 minutes into my ride, my seatpost broke.

4. To get a new seatpost, visited the super-awesome Merv's Bike Shop--a Mennonite bike shop sort of out in the middle of nowhere, or at least six or seven miles from any where else where you could buy anything, which seems sort of in the middle of nowhere, when you're talking about bike shops.

Three things I learned today about covered bridges:

1. They have wood road surfaces (at least this one did)--horizontal wood planking with three six-inch planks placed vertically, side by side, where the tires of your car would track, if you were driving a car.

2. Well worn wooden road surfaces have slits between the vertical slats just wide enough to suck up a bicycle tire and send an unsuspecting cyclist (me) to a disastrous end.

3. Covered bridges are dark inside. They appear especially dark from the outside, when wearing sunglasses. So one doesn't notice the potential hazard of tire-width slits in the road until right on top of them.

Anyway, I narrowly avoided disaster on (in?) the bridge, but in coming out of the bridge, coming up a little rise to an intersection, I heard an odd cracking noise, and suddenly my saddle was much more comfortable. This...

(closer)



...is what happened. Pretty awesome.

Anyway, aside from being extra flexy, the seatpost seemed to be holding alright, so I rode 45 minutes or so to Merv's and for the low-low price of $23 (the cost of the seatpost), they ripped out my old seatpost and shim (that shim had been nothing but trouble, and in fact I'm unsure whether the seatpost at this point could be removed from the deformed and mangled shim), found me a larger seatpost that fit my frame without needing a shim, cut it down to size, and installed it. I love those dudes.

Anyway, here's a pic of the new, bulletproof aluminum number that replaced my old, super-crappy FSA seatpost.


Actually, the picture is more accurately a snapshot of a corner of my basement, a blurry image of a seatpost just happens to be obstructing the view.

...

After all that, it turns out I had a great day in the saddle. Some days, it's just feels great to ride a bike. This was one of those days.