blog @ xanatos.ca

The Greatest Bike Store That Ever Lived

I went out for a long bike ride near Leduc this weekend. Somewhere during the ride I managed to break my back wheel.

Actually, I remember the exact bump where it happened. It made me bite my tongue, and also spit blood and profanities for a while. That's probably why I didn't notice the damage to my bike right away. In fact, I rode for another hour before I felt the wobble, which had probably been getting worse with every passing kilometer.

It was clear immediately that my wheel was no longer perfectly round. But I didn't realize just how bad the wobble was until later, when I sat down to try to straighten it. I was starting to think that even my mad truing skillz wouldn't be up to the task, and then I noticed that one of the spokes had actually snapped in two.

Something like that is quite beyond my ability to repair. I don't keep spare spokes just lying around, and a bendy straw is definitely not strong enough. So I walked the bike down to Redbike, the Greatest Bike Store that Ever Lived.

I really like that place. The guy who fixed my wheel was sympathetic (in his way) when I told him that I had broken my only child. I think he even bumped my damaged wheel to the front of his work queue, because he had it fixed in less than an hour. When I got my bike back, it had a shiny new spoke, and both wheels were so uniformly circular that Archimedes himself may have done the repairs.

Since I bought my bike from Redbike a few years ago, they only charged me thirteen dollars for the new spoke. I would have paid fifty without hesitating, so the least I can do is give them a free plug on my blog:

If you live in Edmonton and you want to buy a bike, go to Redbike. They sell great bikes, they are honest and friendly, and their post-sale service is so good it borders on ridiculous.