Open letter to Unholyrouleur-Jim

Unholyrouleur Jim posted a description of symptons of a cycling addict.  My symptoms weren’t listed so I’m asking for additional advice.

 

Dear Unholyrouleur

I think I may have a problem.  Can I please get your expert opinion?

Sunday morning I raced the local criterium (poorly).  As I was packing up a club member called out to me that someone had left a pair of gloves in the next parking area up.  I promptly forgot.  Later that afternoon I realised that I hadn’t collected the gloves for lost and found.  I was also still fuming about my disappointing race outcome.

So in an act of self flagellation I decided to ride the 42×18 fixie for the 30 mile round trip to pick up the gloves.  When I got there I discovered that they had been collected already.

When I got home and surveyed the damage I cried.  A rough tough trackie crying like a baby at the demise of a rear hub.  Then I slowly turned the wheel and realised I’d killed a Suntour Superbe Pro 32 hole low flange road hub, a collector’s item, which caused the sobbing to deepen.

I undertook some therapeutic activity that mournful Sunday evening, lovingly dismantling the wheel and setting aside the battered remains of a hub to which I owed so much, with which I share so many memories – June 2008 would have been our 22^nd anniversary.  I then rebuilt the wheel with a similarly configured Campagnolo Record (c. 1985) hub that I had been using as a chain keeper (which was an ongoing source of dismay for my LBS owner).  

Last night at the velodrome I showed the corpse to a clubmate who is a precision fitter.  He said he could repair it.  I told him I didn’t want to ride a Frankenstein hub and he calmed me with words of confidence in his ability to make an “invisible” repair.

A trackie and a foundry worker share a brokeback moment.

I wait panting for the return of my beloved hub.  The bike just doesn’t seem right somehow, Campag is nice, but it’s not the same.  And that attitude permeates every ounce of my being.  I have Suntour Superbe saved in my eBay profile as a favourite search.

Here’s where I think my problem lies.  Not that I rode 45 kilometres recovery in the afternoon after a hard race.  Not that I rode a hilly route on a fixie for that recovery ride.  Not that I launched with vigour from a red light near home and stripped the thread on the hub.  Not even when I made the call of shame.  The problem is that I love Suntour Superbe Pro to the exclusion of all others.  I know I’m living in the ‘80s.  I know that technology has moved a long way in 20 years.  I know I’m worshipping a dead brand.  I know my friends think I’m weird.  But I love my Suntour.

Please help me
Big Mike