Mis-spokin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Mavic has responded to VeloNews editor in chief Ben Delaney’s account of an R-Sys wheel failure that left him with a broken shoulder, and I can’t say it exactly gives me confidence in the folks running the show over there. It’s PR at its worst, as in “Pretty Ridiculous.”

The Mavic folks may be taking their cue from aviation safety agencies, which seem to favor “pilot error” when it comes to plane crashes, the pilot being quite safely dead and unable to recount how the port wing suddenly fell off when the fat guy in 10A farted. That’s not the case here — Ben lived to tell the tale, and so far it does not have a happy ending.

Or perhaps Mavic is riffing off the USA Cycling Event Release Form, which is chock-full of variations on Dante’s “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” Phrases like, “I acknowledge that by signing this document I am assuming risks and agreeing to indemnify, not to sue and release from liability (pretty much everyone who ever walked the earth, save your own dumb ass).”

My personal fave, “cycling is an inherently dangerous sport,” makes an appearance, as do “equipment failure,” “the possibility of serious physical and/or mental trauma and injury, or death,” and the crème de la crème, a curtain call by the promise to waive, release, discharge, hold harmless, indemnify and not to sue even for “claims arising from the releasees’ own negligence.”

All this is the long way around to saying, “Shit happens,” which is cold comfort indeed when you’re slumped in the ER with a busted shoulder and a ruined bike. Shit does happen — if it didn’t, lawyers, PR flacks and other non-essential personnel would be hunting honest work.

But you can minimize your exposure to risk, just like USA Cycling’s releasees, by refusing to buy — much less race on — stupid-light equipment like Mavic’s once-recalled R-Sys wheels, a pair of which weigh just 310 grams more than a single Excel Sports Nimbus rear wheel with a 32-hole Open Pro rim, 14/15g stainless-steel spokes laced in a 3x pattern, and an Ultegra hub.

You feel the urge to shed a little weight, take a good dump the morning of race day. That way your shit-happens moment is already behind you.

• Late update: Good Lord, reading skills have deteriorated; attention deficit disorder is a pandemic and the sound of lips moving positively deafening for those of us who make our meager livings via the written word. Some participants in the VeloNews.com forum are castigating Delaney for failing to contact Mavic before writing about his experience with their high-zoot wheelset. His original story clearly states: “In the days and weeks following my accident, I had numerous phone and email conversations with Mavic staff. Five Mavic representatives traveled to Boulder to investigate further.” Um, I think Mavic was aware of Delaney’s concerns, y’all. Fail. See you again next semester.

The view from the seventh floor

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
It's only a flesh wound. . . .
It's only a flesh wound. . . .

I popped round today to see “Crash” Crandall and his wife, Kathy, and am delighted to report that the Old Town Bike Shop honch’ seems very much like his old self, albeit with a few broken bones, some hardware installs and plenty of sutures, all overlaid with a thin veneer of hillbilly heroin, a.k.a. Oxycontin.

John is doing three hours of physical and occupational therapy a day in the Memorial Hospital rehab unit, entertaining more visitors than the shot-up Don Vito Corleone, and contemplating the complexities of chaos theory. (Dude is not your average shop owner. But then if you are acquainted with John, you already knew that.)

I laid a few silly gifts on him: an XL Mad Dog jersey to replace the one the medicos cut off him, quipping that by the time he gets back on the bike he’ll need an XL like the rest of us fat bastards (yeah, right; I rock a XXL and a fat John Crandall is gonna be something like an M); one of my old bike-racing medals (doctored to read “Sticking the Dismount”); and an itty-bitty toy bicycle given to me at Interbike one year by (I think) the infamous alien lobbyist and apologist Gregg Bagni.

When the medicos send John home — perhaps in a week, says Kathy — it will be to a house augmented by a wheelchair ramp, as broken femurs take a while to heal, and the busted shoulder and wrist make crutches unlikely for a spell. But I doubt he’ll need the ramp, chair or crutches for long. John’s a tough ol’ bird, and I’m certain he won’t stay grounded.

The hits just keep on coming

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments

Jesus. I have to stop reading the Ethernets. A possibly hammered bimbo who pleaded guilty in 2007 to driving while impaired is in the Tulsa lockup after croaking two cyclists and injuring a third with her SUV, according to the Tulsa World:

After striking the bicyclists, the SUV swerved off the roadway and into a ditch, knocking over a stop sign before eventually coming back onto the highway, (Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Brian) Warren said. A passing motorist managed to get the woman to stop, but she tried to drive away again and was stopped a second time by another driver, he said.

Look at the size of that shoulder these folks were cycling on — we have roads smaller than that here in Bibleburg, f’chrissakes. You couldn’t be any safer riding a stationary trainer in your living room. Or so you might think. Clearly, you’d be wrong as long as scumbags like Tausha Borland enjoy happy hour behind the wheel.

Happily, in this instance she has been charged with more than littering: Borland faces two complaints of first-degree manslaughter, good for four years to life in the graybar hotel.

Sys-tem failures

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Now there's a Mavic wheel for ya: Open Pro rims, stainless-steel DT spokes and Dura-Ace Hubs. And the only thing cracked, broken or bent is the sumbitch ridin' it.
Now there's a Mavic wheel for ya: Open Pro rims, stainless-steel DT spokes and Dura-Ace hubs. And the only thing cracked, broken or bent is the sumbitch ridin' it.

I don’t want to turn this site into a poor imitation of the DrunkCyclist “Biker down” series, but you really should check out this article by VeloNews editor in chief Ben Delaney — especially if you’re riding a Mavic R-Sys wheelset (even a post-recall version). He had a post-recall front wheel explode underneath him during a race and took a header, breaking his shoulder.

Ben and I have always ridden Mavic wheels, and will continue to do so — but only steel-spoked models. For years the wheel of choice around here was the Excel Sports Cirrus, a pair of 32-hole Open Pros laced to Dura-Ace hubs with DT spokes. That wheel has been replaced by the Nimbus, which uses Ultegra hubs, but I’m still riding my old Cirrus wheelsets on two ‘cross bikes. Nary a broken spoke in many a bumpy mile.

I also like the Neuvation wheels — I have a pair of R28 SL3s on my road bike, and they’ve been rock-solid (plus the prices are killer, especially right now).

• John Crandall update: Kathy Crandall reports that John had a good day yesterday — pain under control with medication and “lots of physical therapy,” including a device similar to a recumbent bicycle. “In occupational therapy he got to take a shower … first one in 11 days,” she adds. I’ll bet that felt good.

• One less psycho on the roads: And finally, the driver who killed two Colorado Cyclist employees is in the hoosegow for three years. Barbara Thomas was stoned on prescription morphine and barbituates and driving without her glasses when she swerved her 1986 F-350 into a pack of cyclists at 26th Street and Westend Avenue, killing Jayson Kilroy, 28, and Edgar “E.J.” Juarez, 30.

Police reportedly said Thomas had been shoplifting at the Safeway on West Colorado Avenue and clipped a man’s car in the parking lot before driving off toward the fatal collision. She also had quite the rap sheet — an outstanding summons for a hit-and-run two months previous, four shoplifting convictions, a citation for drinking in a vehicle and minor traffic infractions, according to the Bibleburg Gaslight.

That a 64-year-old woman who takes 18 daily meds to control pulmonary disease and arthritis is rolled away to the slammer in a wheelchair, clutching an oxygen tank, is not a moment for glee. But I can’t conceive of any suitable alternative. Unless it would be jailing the family members who let her careen around town, full of drugs, in a one-ton truck.

• Plenty more where she came from: You think that’s bad? Take a squint at this. There are 53,201 people who have three or more drunken-driving offenses in Colorado? Jesus H. Christ. I may never ride the roads again.

John’s new ride

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

As expected, John Crandall didn’t remain immobile for long — wife Kathy reports that the old throttle jockey is rockin’ a motorized wheelchair. “As you can imagine, he’s aced it already!” she writes.

John is also enjoying plenty of physical and occupational therapy. Psychotherapy would seem like another must-have item, given his years in the bicycle business, but electroshock at this stage would probably be a bad idea. Just think of John rocketing around the sick bay, sparks shooting from his fingertips as he wheels the chair this way and that.

Kathy also tipped us to John’s room and phone numbers at Memorial (7652A and 365-2741, respectively). The rules are no visitors until after 5 pm. on weekdays so John can undergo therapy and catch some rest between sessions (weekends will be more flexible). I may try to pop by tomorrow and snap a pic for those of you from out of town.

In the meantime, I’ve spoken with John by phone and he sounds like — well, like John. He knows what he’s up against — “It’s going to be a really long rehab,” he concedes — but he’s already gotten a good, if painful, start on the long road home.

Happily, John has a great staff to keep an eye on the bottom line at Old Town Bike Shop while he gets himself back in the game. If you’re planning to spend any money on velo-toys in the near future, I recommend you spend at least some of your stimulus package there. You’ll be glad you did, and so will John.