It's Cursed, I Tell Thee!

I don't remember smashing any mirrors recently, I haven't desecrated any shrines and I'm absolutely certain that I have kept up with the regulatory number of sacrifices this year.... so why is my new bike cursed?

The journey home last night was hampered by a slow puncture that I picked up after about 10 mins. This isn't usually too much of a problem, its just a case of stopping to repair the puncture or replace the tube and get back on my way again. Unfortunately, however, after I dug out my puncture repair kit I discovered that I'd left my tyre levers back in Mabie Forest when I repaired a puncture on Sunday - bugger. No tyre lever meant a pretty nasty job trying to remove the tyre so I decided to reinflate the tyre and see how far I could get before I had to pump it up again. By the time I got home, I had had to stop four times to pump up the tyre.
Not a brilliant start to a new bike relationship, but I figured I had the answer to the problem and decided to swap over the tubes currently on the bike with Dr Sludge tubes that I bought from Chain Reaction when I had my last bike. It took a bit of time and effort, but I was glad that I'd changed them over and that I had one good 'spare' tube to take with me. Unfortunately the bike did fall over at one point during the process (it was upside down at the time), but other than that, all seemed to go fairly well and I went on to replace the nasty cheap flat pedals that had come with the bike with some shiny and new Candy pedals.

Which takes the story up to this morning, a lovely sunny day with a hint of winter in the air, absolutely perfect cycling conditions and a brilliant time to be out on the bike. I liked the new setup, the pedals made me feel more connected to the bike, the new inner tubes filling me with confidence as I dodged through on of the puddles of broken glass that can be found along Glasgow's roads, my only gripe was that I couldn't go faster (the other bike had more gears). It was turning out to be a good day....

... and then my rear mech got stuck in the spokes in my rear wheel and brought everything to a crashing stop.

The bike falling over the night before had bent the rear mech hanger which meant that the rear mech was able to shift up into the path of the turning wheel itself. 2 spokes snapped and one is pretty badly bent and the rear mech is almost unrecognisable. Not good.

I've dropped the bike off at Halfords, hardly the most auspicious of bike repair shops, but the closest one available to me at the time. The bike won't be fixed until Monday. Definitely cursed.

My only consolation? Well, the replacement sensor for my bike computer still hasn't arrived, so none of the cycling this week would have counted towards the overall mileage.