GrantCube
Member
It was a prefectly normal weekend, woke up Saturday morning, ate breakfast, shared some funny moments from the preceding week with the lady wife and then put the armour on, filled the water bottle and set off on a trip to the track I ride every day, Manly Dam. I have told you about this track in the past, 3.6km from home, bush, rocky, rooty, technical and some fast flowy fire trails.......you know, a little bit of everything. Round trip from home and back is about 16.5 km and I try to do two laps of the track at lunch time each day, so all up it is about 27km a day..........gotta luv this working from home thing, right?
Anyway, Im riding to the track and whilst it is a bit damp from the rain during the week, Im feeling pretty good whilst doing the usual flight check, you know, how do the brakes feel, the tyres, is there enough air in the rear tyre, did I bring the pump, all that stuff that your mind goes thru whilst it is getting ready for the onlsaught of adrenalin and co-ordination! I start my first lap and all is feeling good, Im carrying speed where I need to, no pedal strikes, chosing good lines but no risks as I always take the first lap kinda easy until I see what folks have done since my last visit. Some noddy always hides a brick or stick in the wrong place to see what the stupid bike riders do when they come across it!
First lap over, feeling really good now and the second lap will be a good one.........except for one thing........every now and then, when I least expect it, the cranks freeze on me and I cannot pedal unless I back pedal a couple of rotations. I start to get a bearing noise and the freezing cranks come more often so I go into limp home mode and worry about the bike getting me home OK. It does but the cranks do freeze on me a couple of times and I have been able to determine that it is when I am moving up hill and the cadence slows and I am loading the pedals more.
Monday morning and Itake the Cube back to the LBS that handles the Cube brand and is Bosch approved and ask them to speak with Bosh about the bearing noise which is louder now, the freezing cranks and the possibility of a warranty claim. Everyone is very nice but the bike shop cannot recreate either the noise or the freezing cranks......they download the use history from the bike and can see some sharp disruption to cadence but still cannot recreate. They keep the bike for the whole week and keep trying to get it to misbehave but it will not.
So, now it is Saturday morning again, (yesterday), and the bike is back with me as the LBS, Bosch and myself decided to take the bike back to the same track, same circumstances and see if I can get it to do the freezing thing again. They have loaded some new software from Bosch into it and straight away it feels great.......no noise, feels good! First lap around the Dam and whilst watching for the bricks and sticks, I am still covering ground at a fair clip, rounding up other riders and working my way thru families that should be somewhere else with the little 4-5yr olds they are trying to coerce down the drop offs and over the rock ledges. Second lap and now we're getting serious and the bike is perfect.....no horrible noise, no freezing cranks, just some good solid fun! or so I thought.........I ride up a technical little climb, nail it, and then find two dads and one small kid right in the pathway to the drop-of that completes the climb and starts the descent. They move and apologise for not thinking about where they stopped and if only I had paid a little more attention to the fact that there was TWO DADS and only ONE KID.........the drop off was a two stage one and I had just descended the first when another kid appeared out of nowhere, 90 degrees to the track direction and right in my passage! I braked but because the bike was in a severe vertical position and the brakes moved my body weight forward, of course I went over the bars! Two severely bruised wrists from breaking my fall, my right hand looks like a catchers mit it is so swollen, but the real damage is my ribs........my whole right side lights up with fire at the slightest move and carrying anything or bending over is a complete impossibility.......nothing broken and I am not sure how I achieved that, but enough pain to make me forget all about the freeze-up cranks and bearing noise!
Last time I did the rib thing, it was over a month for them to heal enough to let me ride the bike again......damn, I have a race on the 1st August (although social distancing may put paid to that) and I am trying to get this 58 year old body to a level of fitness!
How long before I can get back on the bike? Not sure but I will most likely do it before I should.......
Anyway, Im riding to the track and whilst it is a bit damp from the rain during the week, Im feeling pretty good whilst doing the usual flight check, you know, how do the brakes feel, the tyres, is there enough air in the rear tyre, did I bring the pump, all that stuff that your mind goes thru whilst it is getting ready for the onlsaught of adrenalin and co-ordination! I start my first lap and all is feeling good, Im carrying speed where I need to, no pedal strikes, chosing good lines but no risks as I always take the first lap kinda easy until I see what folks have done since my last visit. Some noddy always hides a brick or stick in the wrong place to see what the stupid bike riders do when they come across it!
First lap over, feeling really good now and the second lap will be a good one.........except for one thing........every now and then, when I least expect it, the cranks freeze on me and I cannot pedal unless I back pedal a couple of rotations. I start to get a bearing noise and the freezing cranks come more often so I go into limp home mode and worry about the bike getting me home OK. It does but the cranks do freeze on me a couple of times and I have been able to determine that it is when I am moving up hill and the cadence slows and I am loading the pedals more.
Monday morning and Itake the Cube back to the LBS that handles the Cube brand and is Bosch approved and ask them to speak with Bosh about the bearing noise which is louder now, the freezing cranks and the possibility of a warranty claim. Everyone is very nice but the bike shop cannot recreate either the noise or the freezing cranks......they download the use history from the bike and can see some sharp disruption to cadence but still cannot recreate. They keep the bike for the whole week and keep trying to get it to misbehave but it will not.
So, now it is Saturday morning again, (yesterday), and the bike is back with me as the LBS, Bosch and myself decided to take the bike back to the same track, same circumstances and see if I can get it to do the freezing thing again. They have loaded some new software from Bosch into it and straight away it feels great.......no noise, feels good! First lap around the Dam and whilst watching for the bricks and sticks, I am still covering ground at a fair clip, rounding up other riders and working my way thru families that should be somewhere else with the little 4-5yr olds they are trying to coerce down the drop offs and over the rock ledges. Second lap and now we're getting serious and the bike is perfect.....no horrible noise, no freezing cranks, just some good solid fun! or so I thought.........I ride up a technical little climb, nail it, and then find two dads and one small kid right in the pathway to the drop-of that completes the climb and starts the descent. They move and apologise for not thinking about where they stopped and if only I had paid a little more attention to the fact that there was TWO DADS and only ONE KID.........the drop off was a two stage one and I had just descended the first when another kid appeared out of nowhere, 90 degrees to the track direction and right in my passage! I braked but because the bike was in a severe vertical position and the brakes moved my body weight forward, of course I went over the bars! Two severely bruised wrists from breaking my fall, my right hand looks like a catchers mit it is so swollen, but the real damage is my ribs........my whole right side lights up with fire at the slightest move and carrying anything or bending over is a complete impossibility.......nothing broken and I am not sure how I achieved that, but enough pain to make me forget all about the freeze-up cranks and bearing noise!
Last time I did the rib thing, it was over a month for them to heal enough to let me ride the bike again......damn, I have a race on the 1st August (although social distancing may put paid to that) and I am trying to get this 58 year old body to a level of fitness!
How long before I can get back on the bike? Not sure but I will most likely do it before I should.......
