Be Careful About What You Wish For

About an hour after posting, yesterday, about how boring the past week was, I decided to get my bike ready for today's commute.  I had been off work for three days, and most of the snow which I had ridden in last week was gone.

I went out to the shop building to get the commuter bike, then decided to pull out the XO-2, and install my big Basil canvas panniers on it.  I had a bunch of stuff to carry to work, and the Basils are huge, actually a little too big to use on a regular basis. So they work well for these occasional large loads.

I brought the bike into the house, and started strapping the bags on.  As I did so, I spun the rear wheel around and noticed it was out of true.

Back out to the shop to get a spoke wrench.  I figured I'd just do a quick, on-the-bike, truing and wait until it was more convenient to to actually put the wheel in the truing stand. As I adjusted spoke tension, though, the rim didn't seem to be responding, very well.

I got down for a closer look.  This is what I found:

Another Mavic 217 bites the dust. 

I think, over the years, that I may have been responsible for the destruction of about half of the total production run of these rims. 

I couldn't find a replacement 217, in 32 holes, at an affordable price, last night.  They are out of production, and eBay is about the only place I know of to look. 

So, I got a pair of Mavic 317s, to replace both rims.  The new rims are black, with machined braking surfaces.  I don't want black rims on this bike, so I may take them down to Lee at Prestige Powder Coat, and have him bead last them.

Or, I might just build them up, as is, and not worry about it.  (This is the most likely scenario.)

Either way, that'll teach me to complain that nothing blog-worthy had happened, lately.

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