Riding Hard

I rode my bike to campus in the evening earlier this week to save time from walking. As I rode across campus to class, I started up a hill. As I slowed to a near stop two-thirds the way up, I tried to quickly change gears. Unfortunately, the chain rattled through the cassette (sprockets on the rear wheel) and popped off the chainrings (sprockets rotated by the peddles). I walked my bike the rest of the way.

After class, I came out to my bike with the expectation that I would only need to remount the chain. A security officer was just coming around to check doors and shined his flashlight on the chainrings. To my amazement, I saw that I had snapped the smallest sprocket! Several bolts had attached it to the larger chainrings, but now it hung by only a single bolt (the teeth going the wrong direction just above the tube intersection)...actually that was only one portion of it. Most of the snapped sprocket was hanging over the peddle shaft (this is what I am holding in the picture). With the baseball coach (he was was in class with me) holding the back tire off the ground and the security officer holding the flashlight, I put the chain on the new smallest chainring and was able to peddle away! And yes...I had a nice ride home.