Mission Aborted: Nipple Fatigue

Way cooler and foggier than the last day of May has any right to be... very pleasant but unusual.

We expected to see a lot of cyclists training for the Death Ride... hardly any.

Wildlife Encounter: Black-Tailed Jackrabbit ((Lepus californicus). Ran away from the road as we approached.

Coyote Cuisine

JB tried to put the hurt to me after Chainbuster and it worked, except he put the hurt to himself even more. There was a substantial headwind up there so I vowed to hang on and go late and that worked perfectly.

Man it was foggy at the Junction.

I wanted to go up at least to Juniper and find some sun, and JB reluctantly agreed. As I was getting ready for more climbing I heard and felt the strangest buzzing... almost like a cell phone on vibrate but much stronger. JB heard it too. Then I realized it was my brake rubbing my rear wheel - somehow I had broken a spoke and was getting that vibration just straddling my top tube. We cancelled the ascent. He gave me a rubber band to tie the spoke up to an adjacent spoke. Riding down was fine, I just didn't rail any corners.

Here's what I found when I got home - just the head of the nipple had broken off, inside the rim. Took it to Encina Bicycle Center in the afternoon and Dave said it was an easy fix and he'd done bunches of them. I've never seen one break like that before - only spokes at the elbow or at the nipple, not the nipple itself.

A good opportunity to do some bike cleaning while I'm at it too.