A bit of bad news today: my bike is out of action for a few weeks.

I usually keep my bike in the garage, in front of my car. We have a 2-by-4 on the ground to keep the car going too far and hitting the bike, but a normally-careful teen driver in our household came in too fast and went over the wood and plowed into my bike, pinning the wheel against the small curb in our garage. I was in my home office when I heard the crash, and I initially thought he just knocked the bike over, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wheel was “tacoed”, which means bent in the shape of a taco.

I took the wheel to the bicycle shop and they said it was beyond repair and unfortunately they wouldn’t have any replacement wheels for two months. If you didn’t know, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a huge demand for bicycles and subsequent shortage available bikes. And that shortage also extends to bicycle parts. Luckily I was able to find a rim on Ebay that appears to have the same dimensions as my damaged one, so I am hoping it will be any easy swap. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it won’t arrive for another week-and-a-half, which means no evening bicycle rides for a while.

Still, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge (nor expensive) deal. And it’s the first damage that my 20-year-old bicycle has suffered, so I should consider myself fortunate!

Source