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So in the beginning of June I was biking up Park Ave around 20th when my pedals went slack and I heard my chain snaking off the gears onto the pavement. I braked and dropped the bike and ran into traffic to gather the chain and when I got back to the bike I could see that my derailleur was essentially obliterated and a close inspection revealed that my overpriced Sharp in-ear headphones had fallen out of my bag and wrapped themselves around the drive train like a bolo, seizing the rear sprocket. Amazingly they survived in working order, so maybe not so overpriced….
So I took the bike into the shop where I bought it, Gotham Bikes because derailleur replacement and tuning is frankly outside of my skillset. And a poorly tuned derailleur blows. When I eventually got tired of waiting for them to call and called myself, they said they needed a couple more days. A couple days later they informed me they had discovered a fracture in my carbon-fiber frame, a fracture that must have occurred last July 16th in the wreck that cost me my left posterior cruciate ligament (we’ll leave aside for now the fact that I took my bike into them after that wreck for a thorough going over where apparently the fracture was missed). So I need a new frame.
I went in and a guy brought my frame up for show and tell. I was kind of interested in upgrading the frame (from a roubaix elite triple) but wasn’t sure where my returns on investment would start diminishing. By which I mean: I use this bike to commute around NYC and for pleasure, but most decidedly not for racing. One can spend many multiples of the roughly 2 grand this bike cost me but it seemed to me that once you’ve got a carbon frame and a nice gear train the amount of actual performance enhancement you get for additional expenditure starts to wane asymptotically. Shaving grams off when I carry a 12 pound locking chain starts to feel like throwing money away. So I put it to the guy holding my frame: got any advice? He pointed to an especially expensive mountain bike he had recently purchased and said, “I couldn’t be happier.” So, I said, “You’re suggesting I should spend as much as I can possibly afford on my bike without reference to what I actually use it for?” He was. “Can I talk to someone else,” I asked. I couldn’t, they were too busy bringing in a new shipment of parts (that store - the one on West Broadway, is seriously undermanned).
So I left and came back three days later and eventually found Henry, who knew all about just what I needed to know, namely available Specialized framesets and the crash-replacement program ins and outs. My faith in Gotham Bikes renewed. I selected a Roubaix Pro Triple. “Got an ETA on that frame?” He did, it was Tuesday, now 9 days ago. I called a week ago on Thursday and still no frame. “We’ll call you.” So now we’re nearing July 11th and that will mean my bike’s been in the shop a whole month while I hobble around on a recently healed broken toe; this makes walking painful. Faith in Gotham Bikes waning again.