Abschlepper
It was one of those “What the heck just happened?” moments: Eldest Son’s bike chain jumped off the rear sprocket and jammed itself into the frame, bringing his bike to a sudden and unseemly halt, which really made him jump. Of course the bike did this as far away from home as possible. After about ten minutes of muttering from Daddy we were able to continue, a bit quicker because we were now running late, and the same thing happened again ten minutes later. This time Eldest Son felt it happen and brought the bike to a controlled stop: he learns fast.
At the time, finding the cause of the problem was less important than getting home in time for lunch. Thank goodness for Xtracycles, although hauling a bike like this is very odd -the bike wobbles all over the place and seems to have a mind of its own, and we get so many people looking I could probably carry advertising. Unfortunately my legs were complaining seriously after schlepping this lot and eldest son back home, so I doubt a future career in low-impact marketing beckons.
The chain tension was fixed in five minutes, plus another 20 reading Sheldon Brown and trying to figure how to get a Nexus gear hub off the axle.
(It looks like we aren’t the only ones to transport bikes like this. That’s always comforting)
4 comments
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April 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm
David Hembrow
Your problem was almost certainly too low chain tension.
You don’t need an Xtracycle to do this. I’ve done it before myself, and I videoed a friend doing it a couple of years back when we sold him a bike.
However, with an Xtracycle you can carry two bikes fairly easily. I did that last year when we had visitors with two small children who only wanted to ride part of our routes.
April 20, 2009 at 6:38 pm
spiderleggreen
Very funny! Looks cool. I’m guessing you son wasn’t sitting on the bike.
April 20, 2009 at 11:34 pm
2whls3spds
I have a picture of a fellow from Baltimore with his daughter on the rear deck of the xtra and her MTB on a rail on the side. Amazing but certainly doable.
Aaron
April 21, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Andy in Germany
Hello all…
David: Quite right- it was the tension. For some reason I neglected to put it in the blog post.
Interesting video, although I’d hesitate to try that in the UK, judging by the response of the police to cyclists riding normally.
Spiderlegreen: No, he was on the Xtracycle. And jolly heavy it was too…
2whls3spds: Unfortunately I can’t view the picture, but I can imagine what it looks like. It’d be pretty wobbly…