City of Angels

I stopped to pick up lunch in Rittenhouse Square awhile back when I saw a familiar sight:

Yes. A bike. You see those a lot on a bike blog.

It's a Fuji Folding Bike, which longtime readers may know as my "old" bike that I was riding when I first started this blog. Her name is Angel. I decided to put her into retirement after a gruesome crash back in 2015, but rather than selling or discarding her, my Dad held on to her in his shed. After seeing this sight, I decided to bring her out of retirement, sort of:

It's pretty tough to ride in the basement.

I did some work on the wheels, getting them back to true and the like just for fun (maybe in the hopes of selling). I also re-calibrated the brakes and lubricated the chain and whatnot. I knew she could have used a full tune up, some cable replacements and some new tires, but for the time being, she was in pretty good shape.

All this work appeared like it would come in handy last month, when I was about to leave for a camping trip and broke a shifting cable on my everyday bike. I took Angel for a spin around the block the night before just to be sure everything worked fine, and it did. I mean, I needed to have a bike with me, right?

So, I folded and packed her into my car that night. After a half day of work the next morning, I set off for Western PA, only to arrive to find the rear tire completely destroyed and the tube inside shredded beyond repair. I have no idea what happened after I put the bike in the car, but obviously someone (or something) was telling me not to ride. The only possible thing I can think of is that the tire pressure increased too fast from the bike sitting in the back of my car, causing the tube to over-inflate, which in turn burst through the tire.

Anyway, back to Dad's house she goes until I can get some new tires, but mark my words, she WILL be back...