It is because two weekends ago, I broke 2 cages on one ride. The ride was 5-6 hours and the roads were bumpy, wet and salty.
The cages are quite old. I got them when I bought a Tomassini as a complete bike 4 seasons ago. The cages had been used for 10 years before I got them.
They saw 3 winters of abuse with me and then I moved them to my mountain bike for summer and back onto my B bike for a 4th winter.
It is unclear what specific incident actually broke the cages, but I find it odd that they both broke on the same ride.
Lucky for me, they continued to hold my bottles until the end of the ride. I did notice that the cages seemed a little loose when I was reinserting bottles. In my oxygen deprived state, I thought that perhaps the bolts holding the cages in place were loose. I figured out that the cages were broken when I was cleaning the salt off of the bike after the ride.
I am curious if any of you science/engineering people can give me a statistical probablity of both cages breaking within the same 5 hour time period after enduring years, perhaps over a decade, of abuse together.
7 comments:
here's your problem:
http://euphoriabeforetotalimplosion.blogspot.com/2009/02/we-all-have-friend-who-flats-out-of.html
clearly they broke due to bad karma.
"...after enduring years, perhaps over a decade, of abuse together."
I bet a downtube mounted cage gets more use (bottles in & out) than a seattube mounted cage. But the seattube cage may have a full bottle in it for a greater period of time than the downtube cage which is probably holding a bottle that is actively being drank from.
You do rotate your cages every 300 miles right?
PVB:
I think that in all of the random rotations, these cages have probably seen statistically similar usage rates in the two positions.
Rosey:
If my bad karma was the culprit, shouldn't the breakage have been more catastrophic, making me look negligent and foolish, instead of just moderately inconvenient and not readily apparent to anyone but myself?
I think it was pretty funny that the person who I think is the most mechanically tight had the double flat last weekend.
There is only one explanation for these cage failures.
Cross-Winds.
But did you watch how quickly, smoothly and thoroughly he changed those flats?
While the rest of you were rubberjawing and eating Clif bars I was watching and learning from the master.
Crosswinds may have been to blame.
For the karma portion, what you didn't realize is that when the cages broke the lead paint covering the metal flaked onto your bottle, which ended up on your hand, and then in your mouth or nose when you wiped your face. Now, come July, you will be lacking 3 watts, when that will make the difference between winning and losing as you head up Wachusset during Fitchburg.
For the plastic bottle portion, thats what you get for buying flourescent pink Topeak bottle cages.
I won that cage as a prime at the Witch's Cup and couldn't get a bid for it on eBay.
I would never buy such an ugly item.
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