I Couldn’t Figure Out the Problem.
Before I got COVID, I took a day to reconsider my goal of walking/biking a total of 500 miles in six months. One day, I had an epiphany.
I wanted to ride the bike 10 miles, but Loki was looking at me like I was abandoning him by leaving the house. So I rode on the bicycle, with Loki at my side. (He actually enjoys this.)
At about 1.5 miles into the ride, Loki screeched to a halt and yanked me off the bike. I had to stop very fast. Even though I’d stopped four times previously to allow him to use the facilities, this was the exact moment he had to go.
So I sipped some water and walked him around a little. When I got back on the bike, it made a terrible sound. It sounded like the brakes were squealing, even though I was just pedaling. I looked at the brakes, and they didn’t appear to be rubbing the tire. I pulled at them a little.
After two minutes of the awful sound, I discovered that turning the tire to the left made the sound stop. But I could hardly ride with my tire constantly turned to the left, so I headed home.
As I rode, I pulled the tire this way and that; I stared at the brakes. I couldn’t figure out the problem. Everything looked the same, but all I could hear was EEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Turns out I only rode a whopping 2.5 miles – and it took me 43 minutes, because I stopped for Loki constantly, and then I stopped and tried to stop the squealing. I considered taking my bike to the bike shop without even telling Bill, but I wanted to wait just a couple more weeks and get a full tune-up. So I left the bike in the garage and asked Bill to take a look.
Bill wheeled the bike back and forth about four feet – and sure enough, there was that terrible squealing sound! I felt vindicated. I obviously had a very serious problem.
I told him about turning the wheel to the left, so Bill turned the wheel to the left. Sure enough, the squealing stopped. Bill reached down beside the wheel, reached into the water bottle holder and turned my water bottle about 25 degrees.
He turned the water bottle handle away from the wheel. And voila! The squealing stopped altogether. The little plastic finger-handle had been hitting the wheel when I rode.
How am I supposed to ride 500 MILES if I can’t even figure out that a water bottle was the source of my problem?