Grinding to a Halt

 Christmas Dinner

 26 December 2012

I rode over to Cheryl's house with my antlers on and her present in a bag smashing into my knee with every pedal stroke.  Jingle!  Smack!  Jingle!  Smack!

While Ron and Cheryl got ready, I fastened her antlers to her helmet.

We weren't planning to go far, just up to the Wawa on 518 in Rocky Hill.

At the Pole Farm, three groups of turkey vultures were enjoying three Christmas venisons.  My presence only disrupted them a little.

We went through the northwestern side of Princeton, up on the ridge, gawking at the too-big houses made visible not just by bare trees but downed ones.

As we turned onto Cherry Valley, I felt a pull on my wheel and heard a grinding screech, as if I'd pulled on my brakes at high speed.  Only I hadn't.  I stopped to check the pads.  Nothing was rubbing.  I spun the wheels.  Fine.  I squeezed the tires.  No flats.  "Weird," I said, and got back on.

There was so little traffic that we took 206 from Cherry Valley to 518.  As we were dismounting, a woman called to us from across the parking lot:  "You still have some kid in you!  That's great!"  I jangled my antlers in response.

We headed home by taking Cherry Hill to the top of the Princeton Ridge.  The grinding screech happened again.  Ron rode up to me.  "Next time that happens, start pedaling.  If it stops, it's your rear hub.  It happened to me last year."  Great.

Cheryl wanted to try something we'd never done:  Province Line south of Drake's Corner.  We knew from seeing it that the road was gravel.  I'd been told by someone who'd tried that "at the end there's just a buncha rocks."

Well, one man's buncha rocks is another Slug's adventure, so off we crunched, dismounted, cleat covers on, through gravel that got big enough to be rocks, and then mud, and then mud giving way to boulders.

We peered over the edge.  "There's the road, down there," Cheryl said.
She started to walk through the woods, heading for a slope that needed hiking boots and free hands.  All that was left of the road was the power line.  Between us and two dirt tracks leading to blacktop was a quarter mile of brambles.

"It'll take you twenty minutes to get down there.  Forget it.  I gotta get home."  I looked back up towards where we'd come from.  We'd already put ourselves into the woods.  We turned ourselves around. 

The air felt colder now.  It was already close to 1 p.m. and I needed to be on the road not much later than 2:15.  "Go ahead if you have to," Cheryl said.  But we stayed together because we didn't really have much farther to go. 

We got up a good head of steam back on Cherry Valley.  That's when I tried to coast again.  Once more my rear wheel pulled and I had to pedal to keep from grinding to a halt.  I pedaled all the way down the Carter Road hill and up past Rosedale and Cold Soil to 206.  I tried coasting again. Same thing, so I just kept pedaling all the way home.

Miss Piggy, Miss Piggy, you're such a pain in the ass.  

Back to Hart's she went today, where I left her for a few hours while I went to the lab and Jack puttered around Princeton.  I picked her up again in the afternoon.  "I cleaned the hub and put new paws in," Ross said.  He then had to translate for me.  (UPDATE:  Yes, I know, it's "pawls."  I didn't hear Ross correctly, and, apparently, he didn't hear me correctly either.)

stolen off the web, of course

Pawls grab springs inside the hub when we pedal.  When we coast they release and let the freewheel spin.  My pawls were getting stuck, or something.  I just did one of my half-assed online image searches, hoping to find a diagram of pawls in action, but I struck out.  I'm sure one of you gearheads will set me straight. (And so you did.  Several of you.)