Spring finally showed up at the end of last week:<\/p>\n Only for summer to immediately elbow it out of the way, inspiring me to head over to the other side of the river on Saturday for a good old-fashioned road ride:<\/p>\n I chose the right day, too, because had I waited until Sunday I would have run right into the GFNY, which as always I completely forgot about:<\/p>\n Wait, does this<\/a> mean River Road is open again?<\/p>\n Either way, this is already one of the Fredliest cycling corridors in North America if not the world, and on the day before a Gran Fondo the Fred Factor was frothy to say the least, with teams forming pacelines and the air resonant with the raspy sound of overly loud cheap freehubs laced into $3,000+ wheelsets. (The current business model for wheels seems to be a cheap hub, a plastic rim, and a four-digit price tag because \u201cceramic bearings,\u201d which in practice are pretty much the same skateboard wheel bearings as every other wheel, only they can charge you a lot more money for them. I really don\u2019t know how people can stand the horrible sound of today\u2019s freehubs, though I guess it drowns out the ticking sound of their press-fit bottom brackets.)<\/p>\n As always on this corridor there were also plenty of triathletes, armed to the teeth (or technically the perineum) with their trademark \u201cbutt rockets:\u201d<\/p>\n It may look like simple hydration, but quick tap of the electronic \u201cblip\u201d on the handlebar releases the CO2, which in turn launches the incendiary \u201cwater bottle\u201d projectile. The tip-off that this is a high-tech weapons delivery system and not simply a hydration-and-flat-fix solution is that there is no such thing as a triathlete who can repair a flat. Fortunately, it\u2019s extremely unusual to see one of these actually go off, since 99% of the time the triathlete will crash while attempting to press the \u201claunch\u201d button.<\/p>\n As for me, I was the hairy-legged guy on the old road bike with a triple and mountain bike pedals that everyone else was passing:<\/p>\n The bike is now running beautifully, all thanks to Ben\u2019s Cycle<\/a>, who had exactly the spare part I needed to rehabilitate the wheels<\/a>:<\/p>\n As a middle-aged guy with all the bikes I could possibly dream of and more you\u2019d think it would take more to excite me than a fix for my cheap Craigslist bike, but you\u2019d be absolutely wrong, and the utter joy I felt when I threaded them on and confirmed they fit was all out of proportion to their diminutive size and cost. Of course, in purchasing these I did violate my oath to not spend any money on this bike; however, when you consider the alternative\u2013that being wasting an otherwise perfectly good set of wheels\u2013I maintain doing so was ethically sound.<\/p>\n What amazes me even more than how easily pleased I am is how utterly stupid I was to be riding around on the wheels in the first place. Not only were both original plastic preload adjuster thingies cracked, but when I went to grease the front hub the front one fell apart immediately:<\/p>\n Keep in mind the axle of this hub basically works like a headset, and without the preload thingy the effect is the same as removing a threadless stem. So if this had come apart while I was riding the wheel would have easily shifted far enough over to lock it up, throwing me over the bars and to my fate.<\/p>\n Wasn\u2019t it only January when I was analyzing a similar crash and taking inventory of all the things I could have done to avoid it<\/a>? <\/p>\n Some people never learn.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bikesnobnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_2641.jpg?resize=736%2C981&ssl=1\")
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