JUN 06, 1994

SNAP

I had made about twenty-seven miles on the way to Sioux Falls, SD from Yankton when I heard a sound that I always dreaded. "POP!!!!" I had thought that maybe a spoke had snapped but something more terrible had happened. The bicycle started to act up a lot more differently than a busted spoke. There was a really bad wobble in the back wheel.

Instead of a spoke breaking the rear chain stay and dropout on the right side of the bike frame had snapped off. I couldn't believe that this would ever happen and I never heard of something like this happening. I racked my brain trying to remember if something could have caused it. I wasn't riding the bike hard and I always made sure that the weight of my gear in back was balanced.

The only thing that I could think of is that maybe this part of the frame could have been stressed from the work of this bicycle mechanic in Madison, WI. He had said that the dropouts were not aligned right and he tried to straighten them out. I didn't think that they needed it but he went on and did it. It was probably then when that part of the frame was stressed and a micro-crack might have been formed.

I was sort of stuck out in the middle of no where. There was no way that I could ride the bike and I wasn't really able to walk the bike in a straight line. I wobbled down the road about a couple of miles before a lady in a pick-up truck stopped to see if I needed any help. I told her my problem and showed her the frame. She told me that I should wait where I was and she would go home to put her groceries away and then take me into Sioux Falls.

When the lady came back in her truck, she had a phone book with her and she told me that I should look in to to see if there was a bike shop that sold Schwinn bicycles. I found one in the listed in the phone book BikeMasters in the southern part of Sioux Falls. The people at the bike shop were really friendly.

They told me that the frame could not be repaired but I should not worry. The Schwinn Bicycle company had a life-time warrenty on their frames and it should be replaced. I wasn't sure what good it will do because I didn't know how long all of the other parts would last. After a couple of calls to the Schwinn company's offices in Boulder, Colorado, I was told that the whole bike would be replaced. It would just take a couple of days for the paperwork to be finished and my pedals, racks, and water bottle cages switched over. One of the guys at the shop called around and found me a place to stay for a few days with another cyclist in town who had taken a cross country trip several years ago.