Generally when you show up somewhere and you find yourself wearing the exact same shirt as someone else it's a bit of an awkward moment but if you're a cyclist you just look like a your on the team. Totally unplanned but half of us showed up to the Saturday ride flying the latest Pirate Cycling League colors, speaks volumes about the PCL and their ethos when people are willing to spend their money on a kit to support a club that really doesn't have dues or many rules and no real official membership is required. It's even more surprising when you consider that you may just run into someone with a jersey on at any gravel event you attend, not just in the midwest but almost anywhere you might go a pirate or two might be among you.
Had a pretty decent group for the Saturday ride and why not temps are starting to get up there and stay up there, not quite the heat of summer yet but most days are in the 60-70 degree range.
The plan was to head out in a generally north and west direction into the wind, end up at Malcolm and then sail back with the wind. It was a great plan and one we'd executed successfully dozens of times so nothing to worry about, right?
During one of our regroups we pulled off to the side of a somewhat busy road on what would be the apron to someone's driveway to avoid being in the way of traffic. Normally not a big deal but you never really know who lives there so we were a bit uneasy when the lady of the house came out and began to walk up to our group. We were hopeful that we weren't being a bother and as it turned out we were not. She chatted us up for quite a while talking about how she often would watch the Gravel Worlds racers come by on the years when the course took them down the road in front of her house. We commented on the unique poles she had on her property and she shared the story of how her father who owned the house before her was blind and he had put up those poles and some string so that he could navigate the property without the aid of his eyesight. That was pretty cool in and of itself but then she explained that the colors on the poles were added by her, she used to work for a company that produces vinyl for school busses and other such things. The colors on the poles were scraps that were left over from some of the jobs that she brought home and applied to the poles to brighten them up after her father passed on. It's odd how the whole encounter started out a bit apprehensive and turned out to be a great bonding experience, she even offered the use of her driveway and hose whenever we rode by again and needed a place to rest or water for a water bottle.
We took off eventually and continued the route, about mile 15 I went to unclip for another regroup when to my surprise instead of my shoe disconnecting from my pedal, my pedal disconnected from the bike! It didn't take long to see that the entire pedal had come off of the spindle, attempts were made to fix the pedal but most of the inside of the pedal had become road fodder when the pedal came off and putting it back on was futile. I've ridden Crank Brothers for years now and this was my first time having an issue with them but they have a sorted history of issues for some to include the spindles breaking off so I was thankful it wasn't that. Jackie and I turned around while the rest of the group moved on with the route. Let me tell you pedaling on just the spindle of an Eggbeater pedal is not the best way to get around in this world but we made it back to Cycle Works without any further issues. I decided to grab another set of pedals and then ride some of the route backwards and meet the group on the return.
The shop didn't have anything Eggbeater except the very basic model and I had toyed with the idea of moving back to Shimano pedals so I pulled the trigger on a pair of Shimano M540 pedals that are very similar to the tried and true M520 pedals that it seems most SPD pedal folks use when they go with Shimano. The main difference between the two is the M520 has flat sides on the spindle for a pedal wrench and a 6mm hex head on the end of the spindle whereas the M540 only had the hex head on the end. I'd been toying with the idea of moving back to Shimano for a bit but with multiple bikes moving from one pedal system to another is a pretty good cost investment. It just so happened that I had been slowly putting flat pedals on a number of my bikes over the last 2 years so there weren't too many clipless only bikes left to change out, that along with the low end only Crank Brothers pedal available made the choice easier. I guess I'm and SPDer again. While I haven't had any issues with Crank Brothers except this one it is a good reminder to make sure you check things over on your bicycle on a regular basis. Had I done that I'm sure I would have noticed play in the pedal and been able to take care of it before it became an issue, live and learn I guess and in all honesty it could have been much worse than it was.
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