Tube + Drive-train = Bad. Photo courtesy of Dave Roth
Hey, that doesn't belong in there!
Your eyes do not deceive you. That is my trusty inner tube that is all sucked up into my rear derailleur (and wrapped around my brake/circumnavigating the gears).
It was a grand soft evening out at Portland International Raceway. The Yakima boys opened the doors to the School of Cross and the lessons began. Beyond having the infinite pleasure of getting to listen to (watch) Matthew Slaven and Dani Dance (cute! and her name is Dani Dance! and she’s FAST!) explain proper cross technique, we were also treated to an Embrocation Lesson from Jeremy Dunn and Joe Staples (you can view another rendition of this lesson here).
[If you haven't had the opportunity to meet Joe, you should really hunt and track him without further hesitation. When you corner him, make him talk to you. It doesn't matter what he's saying, just make him talk and then listen. It's aces. Or just listen to the video linked above...]
I digress. We learned, we laughed and then we raced.
Sort of.
It was a “practice race” and Dylan the Yakima-Man-in-Charge advised us not to “elbow each other through the opening turns or anything crazy like that” so I was forced to scrap my original plan and roll out nice and easy-style.
When the gun went off (ie Dylan said “have fun!”) we headed into the BMX course and made a left turn into some nice, soft rutted dirt. Short track mountain biking on a ‘cross rig anyone?
Pretty sweet. More sweet was the disoriented swaying of our group – women veered off-course unpredictably and then re-entered at all variety of unsanctioned locations.
“Where did you come from?” I asked a woman who was coming toward us from the right.
“I don’t know!” she laughed.
And so it went.
When I hit the pump track section I was ready for some mayhem so I drilled it despite the fact that I really don’t know how to properly ride a pump track. Bad decision. Airborne on a mountain bike is kind of rad. Airborne on a ‘cross bike without the skills to properly land such an endeavor? Not quite as rad.
I bottomed out the tire, tried not to shit my pants, and pedaled on. The rest of the race was a silly exercise in trying to finish the race before my rear tire went completely flat. I didn’t make it and with just a little ways to go, the tire rolled off the rim and the little tube made a great escape and mauled the drive-train.
Luckily, my timing for such a calamity was spot on. As it turned out, the Veloforma girls had planned an exorcism to rid our friend Susan of her PIR demons (she’s got a string of bad luck at this venue that is a mile long.)
Having never attended an exorcism before, everything was new to me, but I’m pretty sure it went down according to standard practice: man-shaped (voodoo) donut stabbed with tire lever placed on my rear wheel, small fire started with the help of roughly 34 matches (it was windy), one large bottle of something carbonated.
Susan stabbed the man-shaped donut repeatedly with the tire lever after which we tore him limb from limb, smacking loudly as we chewed. Carbonated beverage was passed around the circle and poured onto the cursed rear wheel.
Nothing can stop us now!
(and, yes, actually I did make a video of the exorcism… it’s coming.)
Super fantastic photos of the evening can be found over at PDXcross.com
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Crazy how that tube ended up, your story is funny I remember my first time on the pump section and going way to fast, but pulling it off, was Susans demon PIR or a man as the donught was “man” shaped?
The demon was definitely PIR… I have no idea how the man-shaped donut contributed to the exorcism but, for the sake of my rear tire, I hope it worked!
Same exact thing happen to me earlier this year. Most expensive flat tire I ever had.
Tube + DriveTrain + 30mph + carbon rim = yikes!