Just Riding Along - Sunday Comics with Taj Mihelich
Every bike mechanic has funny stories about customers who were "just riding along" when something failed on their bike (and they usually want a free repair or a warranty). I asked mechanics to share some stories on my Instagram and got tons of funny ones. Thanks very much! I illustrated a few of them for your entertainment.
My down dangler got caught in the wheel strings.
- @space_cadet_ollie
Almost every JRA story is because of a NPA (Not Paying Attention). But some stories are just pure gold. Had a friend's girlfriend come walking her beach cruiser home with the front end of the bike mangled. She claimed JRA, but we discovered the empty box of Franzia and that said enough.
- @synchronicity_iv
Guy with a broken arm and 2 black eyes: “JRA and pulled up, the wheel came out the forks, the forks hit the ground and the springs shot out the top and hit my face as I fell. The bike wasn’t built properly and I’m going to sue.”
Me: “did you buy the bike here?”
Guy: “no...”
- @d2jbmx
"I was just riding along and my weave comes out and it goes right in my chain!" And yep there it was all mangled in the freewheel.
- @ericxbrown
I’ve known customers try and argue a frame warranty, then aforementioned customer ends up with a newspaper article on him being hit by a car while on the same bike they’re trying to get the warranty for.
- @modebmx
MENTIONS: @Tajlucas
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"I broke the chain," he said--and it works best if you realize he looked and sounded a lot like Yosemite Sam.
"Thank you," I said.
"For breaking the chain?"
"No, for getting the subject of the sentence right. Most people say, 'the chain broke', as though they had nothing to do with it," I explained.
"Oh, hell no, I broke it. I was beating the piss out of that thing."
That was one of my favorite customers ever.
1. customer buys brand new 29er from me.. has it for a few days.. calls to complain getting a flat and because the front brake didn't work all of a sudden.
*****turns out, he slammed into a rock or root, got a pinch flat and when he changed the tube on the trail, he put the front wheel in the dropouts backwards ---brake rotor no worky when it's on the wrong side of the fork ya silly... we had a good laugh about that. and --- hey, flats are flats when you have tubed tires. For some reason, lots of people think their new bikes shouldn't get flat tires
2. I bought myself some brand new XTR gear for my bike (at retail). had it on my bike for at most 2 minutes...trail side stick kicks up, goes into my spokes and rear D. rips the rear D in half, takes out about 4 spokes.
3. Snowshoe 24 Hour race.. buddy of mine and I were riding to the start/finish line, getting ready to go out for our lap. super long and steep road getting there from the condo we were staying at, we were probably doing about 40mph for 4, 5 minutes (all paved downhill). outta the blue we hear a load BAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR noise. well, the pads on his Vbrakes melted from all the heat and flew out and he was metal on metal for a solid 70 yards until he came to a grinding stop . ahh, rim brakes, gotta lover em
….
some of us would do 2 laps in a row so we could spend more time resting before we went out again. I preferred the night laps when there seemed to be less riders and shoot, for some reason, I was always a good bit faster at night. my guess was because I didn't see some of the dangerous elements of the course and Id just blast through everything, not knowing the dangers.
----- I tell ya though, those night laps, you'd get some serious tunnel vision riding those courses, totally messed with your head... tall grass would appear cartoon-ish, drops and bumps were totally different than they appeared and if you had someone riding behind you with a more powerful light, that really messed things up for ya
Who do we assign the responsibility for the action toward, an inanimate object, or the person in control of the object?
Drivers of vehicles that hit things get a free pass on this all the time.
Now chew on this: "Self-driving car hits cyclist"?
Language matters. But chill, it's Sunday.
If you're gonna smart-ass, smart ass properly.
singletrackworld.com/2017/04/flaunting-the-laws-of-the-highway
Stay woke, man.
But it's CALLED a mountain bike.
"My son was just riding along and the metal tubes in the back sheared off, can you fix it?"
Me "So the frame is broken?"
"No the frame is fine. It's just the metal tubes in the back sheared off."
"You'll have to bring it in and let me look at it"
Sure enough both chainstays were snapped off at weld and dragging on the ground, kid rode it the whole way home like that.
I think learning to crash safely is a important early lesson; crashing onto your non-drive side, uphill side of the trail, wash out rather than high-side flip, and the ditch and roll in cases of OTB. Not that you always have a choice on how things go tits-up.
That’s commitment.
Wheelstrings=spokes
????
Did you not read the newspaper caption either? “Cyclist Hits PARKED Car”