Please refrain from stinging. I know it’s just your nature. It’s what you do, and you are so small and your honey is so prized. But I can assure you that I have no designs on your colony. My intentions are pure, as far as your hive is concerned.

If you must sting, please do your business quickly and be on your way. I am very sorry that you must enter your death throes upon releasing your sting, but quite frankly that is not my problem. I hate to be insensitive, but once again, it’s your nature. I have no control over your physiological traits, and I must at this point remind you that my intention was never to bring harm to your hive. I’m just a guy trying to make his way home.

If you must linger, please understand that while I am much larger than you, I am susceptible to what we call “a case of the heebie-jeebies.” I know it’s unreasonable, but please understand that cases of the heebie-jeebies can actually be quite perilous, especially at highway speed in our automobiles when we suddenly discover a stowaway in its death throes underneath our garments.

Finally, please understand that my bellybutton, while fuzzy and warm, is not an acceptable final resting (or death-throe-ing) place. Remember those heebie-jeebies? We humans are a prideful lot, and I dare say that I am duly embarrassed by the heebie-jeebie dance I exhibited whilst exiting my automobile. I have neighbors, and some have become suspicious. I dare say that today I must have confirmed their qualms about my sanity.

Part of Murphy Canyon Creek goes through a tunnel before emerging at the bike path by Qualcomm Stadium. That’s where the bats live.

Last night I got there just after dusk and the bats were out en masse, streaming out of the tunnel and all around the bike path. As my headlight revealed brief glimpses of little mammals on the wing, I made some trilling sounds to announce my presence and scooted through the swarm. I don’t know if it made a difference but this time I didn’t hit any.

Perhaps I should add a rabies shot to my bike bag.

Do two bats constitute a swarm? Things like this tend to wax hyperbolic when experienced on two wheels.

There’s an area of my commute where I often encounter wildlife. Behind Qualcomm Stadium lies a bike path that connects Mission Valley with Murphy Canyon and it’s a Godsend for cyclists, allowing us to navigate through Mission Valley without having to mix with traffic. It runs parallel to Murphy Canyon Creek, which funnels a constant stream of landscape runoff to the San Diego River and provides something of a riparian ecosystem in the midst of an otherwise urban environment.

Rabbits, rats, and swarms of gnats are common sights along the bike path, though the gnats are never so much seen as they are felt as I pedal through at 20 mph. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut, though I haven’t figured out how to get them out of my hair.

I had a late day at work, and by the time I got to the bike path, the sun had set and darkness had just fallen. Suddenly to my right, a dark birdlike creature winged in front of me, its flight jagged and crisscrossing pell mell around my front wheel. Wait a second, that’s no bird! It’s a bat!

Just when I realized that it was a bat, a second came from the left and smacked squarely into my chest.

I like to think I’m not a pansy when it comes to creepy creatures. I don’t feel squeamish at the sight of roadkill, even when it’s inside-out. I’ve ridden by a rattlesnake without much care and I’m fascinated by the huge argiope garden spiders whose girth steadily increases throughout the summer.

But getting whacked on the chest by a bat left me a little unnerved. The dull pain left me unsure whether the bat might still be on me, and thoughts of it going down my jersey and nibbling on my nipples gave me the heebie-jeebies. I swatted at my chest and realized it was gone but couldn’t shake the sensation that I was riding into a scene from Batman Begins.

Alas, there were no CGI swarms to terrorize me. I started to laugh and I hoped that the little bugger wasn’t hurt.

This is one of the many reasons why I love commuting by bike.

UPS reports that my new wheel is out for delivery. I don’t know why I’m so excited about this. Maybe because I’m ready for a wheel that I can trust.

Last night I broke my rule about solvents and bikes. I took the cassette off and gave it (the cassette) a thorough soaking and scrubbing. It’s clean and sparkly and prepped for its new home. Cassettes have no moving parts and the solvent did not go anywhere near the bike itself, but still. Maybe it’s the exception that proves the rule.

I bit the bullet and ordered a new rear wheel. This one has 36 spokes; the spokes are stainless (not alloy) and the nipples (don’t laugh) are brass, so in theory this wheel should be pretty strong. By comparison, my current sh**ty wheel has 24 spokes and the original wheel had 32 spokes which seems to be the standard for 26″ wheels.

I’m still a little bit annoyed at my LBS for recommending the Mavic Crossride to me since I explicitly asked them whether it would hold up under the weight of a rack and the stress of disc brakes. “Oh sure, these spokes are beefy.” Though I guess I can’t be *too* mad since they broke up the wheelset and I was desperate for a new wheel at the time. Live and learn, though I don’t seem to be learning the “you get what you pay for” lesson very well.

Anyway, the wheel is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to it, since I noticed that my new spoke is already twisting and it’s completely bound to the nipple. I will never buy a wheel with straight-pull spokes again.

I was three quarters into this morning’s commute when I heard the all too familiar *ping* of a rear spoke giving up the ghost. It’s been only two months since my last rear spoke blew; this is getting ridiculous. At least I was only a couple miles from the bike shop where I knew they would have a replacement in stock since they had special ordered a set last time. I’d still have to wait a half hour for them to open.

So I had some time to reflect. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. People try to sell you on the idyllic aspects of bike commuting: be green, get exercise, save money on gas, blah blah. What they don’t say is that it’s a gigantic pain in the ass. Tires need replacing, the bike needs washing, and the drive train needs constant attention to stay clean and lubricated. And let’s face it, fixing a flat just downright sucks, especially on the way to work. Not to mention all the asshole drivers who are either trying to kill you or just trying to drive but suck donkey balls at both. And that’s if you can find a decently safe enough route, what with our dependence on freeways and all.

Save money on gas? That’s a riot. It takes calories to commute by bicycle, so you’re going to eat more. Did I mention fixing flats? 5 bucks for a new tube, or you can save a little by patching but at the expense of time. You’ll need some clothes, too. Sure you can get by on cotton but it’s going to wear out fast, and all that brightly colored cycling clothing is downright highway robbery, and all that clothing needs to be laundered. Don’t forget lights (and batteries) if you ride at night, and a multi tool and pump and tire levers and a spare tube, and oh yeah you’ll need something to carry all that stuff in, so at the very least a backpack for your change of clothes or a rack with trunk bag or panniers.

I’m fairly certain there’s a design flaw with my rear wheel that’s causing the spokes to break. Both have broken at the same point, where they leave the hub. I don’t feel that I can trust my equipment, and that’s a huge morale buster. Do I really want to fork over the cash for a new wheel? If I want to continue commuting, I don’t have a choice. Wheels should last longer than a year.

Changing out a spoke on a rear wheel can be a hassle, depending on the side of the wheel the spoke meets the hub. If it’s on the drive side (the side with the cassette & chain), then the cassette needs to be removed to gain access to the hub. Removing the cassette requires a special tool that most folks don’t carry with them, so a broken spoke on the drive side usually means you’re stranded.

If the broken spoke is on the non-drive side, changing it out is pretty simple: just thread the spoke through the hub, look at the other spokes to see how to orient it, and screw the nipple onto it.

Unless, of course, you have a disc brake, in which case the rotor needs to be removed. In my experience, removing the rotor is way harder than removing the cassette, since the rotor is affixed by 6 Torx screws which in addition to requiring a special wrench, are usually also held in place by LocTite.*

But not in my case. I have a Mavic Crossride Disc wheel that has special straight-pull spokes that don’t need to be threaded through the hub like j-spokes do. They just sort of sit in a slot on the hub and are held in place by a flange at the end. Which means that I don’t have to remove anything to replace a spoke, regardless of what side the spoke is on. Which would be awfully convenient if it were not for the fact that Mavic makes a bazillion different types of spokes and no one has mine in stock.

At least the power of modern commerce allows my spoke to be ordered. Which means that the bike is out of commission for an estimated 1-2 weeks. I forecast a sharp increase in my Surly Index over the next couple of weeks.

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* Side note: newer rotors are affixed by some crazy new technology called center-lock, which doesn’t have the 6 pesky Torx screws to deal with.