We all lose teeth in various ways. Of course, when we’re kids, we lose all of
them so that our “grown-up teeth” can grow in. (A boy in a poetry workshop I
conducted wrote, “My teeth are like stars, they come out at night”.) Then, as time goes on, our teeth fall out or
fall apart because of neglect, diet or simply age. Or we might get into an accident or fight
that knocks out an incisor. Or two.
Wednesday night, I lost two teeth. No, I didn’t win or lose: I didn’t fight. And I didn’t fall on my face. Rather, those teeth were the casualties of a
bungee cord.
Yes, you read that right. I was pedaling home from work when, in the
middle of a turn through a busy intersection, I rode into a pothole. Just as I reached the other side, in front of
a gas station, I suddenly couldn’t pedal.
No matter how hard I pushed, they wouldn’t move. Then, I budged them
slightly; they moved as if my whole drivetrain had been stuffed with horsehair.
A bungee cord I’d hooked across the top of the
rear basket on my LeTour popped off and entangled fell into the rear wheel. One
of the hooks latched onto the non-drive side spokes. That pulled the body of the chord into the
space between the fixed gear sprocket and the hub flange and coiled it.
The hook was so tight in the spokes and the cord
so tautly wrapped between the cog and flange that I couldn’t get it out by
hand. Rotating the wheel only seemed to
pull it tighter. I had to borrow a pair
of pliers and a knife from an attendant, which I used to bend the hook out of
the spokes and cut it away from the cord, which I could then unwind.
At first I didn’t notice the missing teeth. I felt an odd skipping when I applied any
kind of pressure while pedaling. I
figured that something was bent and, as it was late, I crossed my fingers and
kept on riding.
I made it home with my chain going ker-chunk,
ker-chunk every couple of pedal rotations.
I propped the bike and found nothing bent or warped, not even a chain
link. Then, after a couple of more pedal rotations, I saw
that I’d lost two
teeth—and, of course, a chunk from the body of that cog.
So, I flipped the wheel to the freewheel side,
gave the chain (a SRAM PC-1) a couple of shots of oil, and everything ran fine.
The cog was generic. Maybe I’ll spend a few extra dollars and get
something better. Phil Wood cogs are
great (I use them on Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear), though I’m not sure I want
to spend that much, or whether they’ll fit the Formula hub on the LeTour. Perhaps I’ll get a Surly. I don’t want to lose more teeth.
