Look, Moose!

Okay, so Roj told me he could fix my spokes and I have to admit I had some trepidation giving him both wheels off my bike Tuesday night.

But the thing about Roj, people think he's crazy because he's such a bohemian, but he never half-asses anything. If he decides to do something, such as ride Bike MS on a single-speed stock 1979 Mongoose BMX, he freakin' does it.



And yeah, he is crazy, but he doesn't tell you he can do something when he can't do it. He took my back because he saw it wasn't in true and he wanted to true it up. Me, I'm just thinking I'll be lucky to get out of paying the Trek Store people a fortune to fix this stuff.



Good thing he took the rear, he discovered a broken spoke there, too. He has pegs on both ends of his bike, so it's possible our little collision broke that spoke, or it's possible I've been riding it that way for awhile now.

Not only did Roj fix everything, he got a tire I mounted the wrong direction mounted correctly, and he cleaned the rubber up. These tires didn't look this good when I bought them in September. As we mounted the wheels on the bike, and I saw how perfectly the tires spun, I felt ashamed to have harbored any doubts about handing over those wheels Tuesday night. If computer programming ever turns its back on this guy, he can easily get a gig as a bicycle mechanic.



Anyway, we rode 16 miles, most of the Blue Moose ride, though without the KCK leg. Roj took a wrong turn and I wondered if he'd dropped out completely before he finally caught up to me. By then, even Lawn Chair Larry was long gone and we didn't know Larry's shortcut through Roeland Park as well as we thought we did. We eventually got back on track, coming up Lamar and all that, but when Roj's crank came loose and delayed us another half hour or so we just focused on getting our asses through the now darkened streets back to the Moose.

It was 8:30 when we finally got back to our cars, which is pretty late. But I have to say as far as how my bike was riding, if Roj hadn't had some mechanical difficulty, I think I could have made record time (for me).



Me and Roj managed not to ride into each other, though I have to say spring has brought out the cute jogger chicks, so the ride was not without danger to mental focus.