Pre-Trip Planning

It all started off as a simple wheel cleaning…. My dad and I took the front wheel apart just to see if it needed cleaning. To say it needed cleaning was like saying Gandalf has an ok beard, and trust me Gandalf has and awesome beard.  We use gasoline as a degreasing agent to clean the race and ball bearings (which we ended up replacing in the end anyways). We started doing the same for the back wheel but as soon as we took the back wheel apart the cone where the ball bearings ride on simply fell out. Turns out the axel in the back had broken and the wheel was riding on the thin pin that is used to tighten the wheel. Needless to say the races and ball bearings were a total mess. And thus the Pandora’s box of bike tires was opened. For the next week we looked into getting new wheels (couldn’t because modern wheels have a larger diameter and wouldn’t fit my frame), replacing the races (couldn’t because we were only able to remove one of the sides) so in the end it was a choice between putting back new ball bearings into one good race and one damaged race, or getting the whole wheel restocked using a new hub that we bought. We chose the one that would get the bike on the road :)