Well, it may not be drizzling this morning but I’ll wax philosophical for a moment and say that into every long-distance bike tripper’s life some rain must fall.  My turn came this morning.

Last night I noticed a wobble in my rear wheel.  I’d stopped and had one wheel or the other or both trued at several shops along the way.  No big deal there.  I had a piece of strap iron on a bike path get sucked up into the rear wheel and break a spoke in New Jersey, but that happened not too far from a bike shop and was dealt with in short order.

I’m assuming what happened in today’s situation was that a combination of the terrible pavement on roads across Kennedy Space Center plus a perfectly placed bump in the pavement somewhere close to the end of the day may have pulled through a stress crack in the rim and created the slot-like hole you see in the photo.

Fortunately Stuart has at least one full service bike shop: Beyond Bikes, which is where I’m at now waiting for a replacement wheel to be built.  So once again I’m losing the little cushion of extra miles I’ve built up, but that’s how these things go.