Yesterday was a swell day. After spending 70 buckaroos on a tooth that I shouldn't have broken, I went biking with my buddy Vince up in Forest Park. He couldn't ride until 6ish because he was having a lousy day.
I had time to kill so I started fixing the squeek on my new rear brakes. I took the pads off to push the pistons back and then replaced the pads. That took a little jiggling (of the pads, not me) because they're different than my old Hayes brakes. Sound gone.
We started up the hill with Vince's rear brakes squeeking like only a dirty disc brake does. We stopped a few times for him to add and replace shims, but nothing could silence the chalkboard sound.
One stop was at the porta-a-potty, where I saw the door was "occupied". For some reason I thought that someone was playing a trick on me and had locked the door from the outside and left. Because no one could actually be in the Honey Bucket. So I swore about the door being locked. Of course someone was inside and yelled "Yea, I'm in here." A tall blonde woman jogger traipsed out of the Bucket looking not too happy and ran off.
So a few miles later, I reached for my right (rear) brake to slow down from my highway speeds to go around a corner and had to pull the lever all the way to the bar to get any resistance. Why, that's funny, I just fixed that. The braking sounds reminded me of a brick scraping over glass (which I've done before.)
I kept on riding, like a dumbass (as Red would call me, I'm sure) just adjusted the lever so it would connect earlier. I rolled up next to Vince and he looked at me and said "Dude, you're grinding metal!"
No way, I just fixed those puppies. I hopped off and saw that I indeed was grinding metal. My right brake pad was gone and that side of the rotor was all torn up. It's one thing to lose a pad (around $25), but I ruined my rotor (probably like $80.)
We said to 'Hell with it all' and rode the 4 miles back to our cars which were nicely positioned close to McMenamins and a large basket of fries.
Posted by Sam at April 29, 2004 3:01 PMIt's funny because it's not me.
Posted by: Big Bro at April 29, 2004 4:30 PM