A Wheel That is Not Round, Part One
As I pushed off for home the other evening upon the conclusion of a convivial gathering, from my rear wheel came a Strange Noise that had not accompanied me on my outbound journey. A kind of shuddering rasping sound, as if something had become stuck to the tire and was rubbing against the fender with every revolution of the wheel.
I had been looking forward to a moment in the fresh air, the better to reminisce upon the party’s highlights, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that this wheel flopping around like a load of sneakers in a washing machine made negotiating the distance between Tribeca and Brooklyn seem like a trip across the Darien Gap. No mental effort, it seemed, no matter how concentrated, could turn my thoughts from dreadful musing.
“What the hell is that damn noise?”
Usually a noise like that is the announcement of a flat tire scheduled to arrive within seconds. But this time, inspection at a red light revealed nothing stuck on the tire, removal of which would have been followed by the dismal hissing sound of the air inside the tube returning to its natural home. By the time I vibrated to a stop, mid-buzz, in front of my building, annoyance had been replaced by relief I’d been spared a flat tire repair in some murky region of of the Manhattan Bridge. An experience, even under the best of circumstances, of which the only good thing is a prolonged moment with the spectacular view.
When I got the bike into the light, I saw this:
This tire has a hernia.
“My tire has a hernia,” I said into the telephone the next morning.
“I have to see it,” Mike replied viagra or cialis, “but it sounds like a ruptured casing. If that’s what it is, you need a new tire.”
The tire casing, the mesh that makes an anonymous blob of rubber hold the shape of a bicycle tire, can rupture for different reasons. For example, prolonged friction, as in the case of some irregularity like a mal-adjusted brake or a bent wheel. But because this hernia was right on the front of the tire, the cause was probably some sharp obstruction in the street, like riding hell-bent over the sharp edge of a metal plate, or a pothole.
A painful memory swam into consciousness.
Right in front of the Brooklyn Hospital, at the corner of Ashland Place and DeKalb, there is an evil little pothole in the very middle of the bike lane. There’s always a lot of action at that intersection; a couple of bus stops produce a constant supply of pedestrians crossing every which way, not to mention hospital inmates desperate for a cigarette rolling their wheelchairs right out into the street. This constant commotion, as entertaining as it is perilous, requires the survival-minded bicyclist’s full attention, so I’ve never actually seen this pothole.
Nonetheless, I know it’s there, having nearly lost a couple of back teeth from the violence of the introduction to its particular contours. It must be about a foot deep. The first few times I took that route I rode into it head on, causing the unfortunate region of my person at that moment reposing upon the bicycle seat to rise abruptly into the air like the puck in a carnival high striker game.
Like Shakespeare’s croaking raven, upon the $25.00 bicycle tire so doth the unseen pothole bellow for revenge.
