This morning's ride was an odd one in several respects. First, the weather forecast had called for rain much of the day, but a window where it looked like I could squeeze in a ride between 9 a.m. and noon. I set out at 9:15 ... but in a moderately steady and unrelenting rain.
Second, I just got started when a mechanical problem from yesterday came back to bit me. As I was finishing up yesterday, about a half mile from home, I hit a rough patch on the sidewalk that threw my seat off kilter, so that I was tilted uncomfortably to the right. Rather than try and do anything about it at that point, I just finished the ride up, and then allowed myself time to address it this morning. Though I am admittedly pretty much a mechanical idiot, on this occasion I was able to diagnose the problem, haul out my (aptly-named) Allen wrenches, and loosen the clamp so that I could rotate the seat back into position before retightening it. However, I evidently didn't tighten it ENOUGH, and it slipped again just as I was getting started this morning (about 2 minutes into the ride). Having just worked on it a few minutes before, though, it was an easy matter to haul the wrenches out of my pannier (or bag, attached to the rear of the trike) and take care of it.
The rain had already caused me, by three miles in, to decide to shorten my ride to a single round trip to Marsh Park. But, as it turned out, even that was not to be. Heading east along Textile Rd., as I crossed the first boardwalk, my rear wheel began to emit a horrific squeal (not steady, but pulsing). A couple of minutes later, the trike began to shudder, and I decided I'd best head home. And then, shortly thereafter, the trike slowed WAY down, so that I thought at first it was a flat tire. But, upon examination, since that didn't seem to be the case, and I didn't know what was going on, I decided a trip to the dealer, Jack's Bicycle in Dearborn, was in order—even though I was left today with only a nauseatingly short ride of 4.3 miles in 32 minutes.
So I chained up the trike to a mailbox, contacted Uber on my phone (I have long considered Uber to be my emergency backup, but have never had to resort to them before), got a ride home, backed the rear end of the car into the garage so I wouldn't have to get down on the wet driveway, put the rack on the car, went back down to pick up the trike, and returned home to type up a note of explanation before setting off for Jack's.
Once there, it didn't take too long. I was helped by my friend Richard Spitler, an older man who first helped me when I was looking into getting a trike in early 2015, then sold me my first one that May, and has done most of the work on that one and its successor, which is the one I have now. It didn't take him too long to correct the problem (less than a half hour) -- he said that one of the bolts on my rear rack had broken, and gone into the tire, causing the noise, the shuddering, and the slowness.
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