Deciding that my Taco Bell supper was too much to weigh on my conscience, I decided that a late night bike ride was the thing to do. This after dark guilt ride is something that happens entirely too frequently. But, that's beside the point.

Before I even get out the door, I was looking for my pump to top my tires off. How something that large can go completely missing is beyond me, but after a solid 10-15 minutes of looking, it was nowhere to be found. So, I decided to just live with the pressure at whatever it was and go. Get outside, start Strava and my music, hop on the saddle, clip in, and away I go... except I don't. As I'm rounding the corner towards the apartment exit, I realize I'm not wearing my helmet. Return home, grab helmet, rinse and repeat. I'm finally on the road.

So, I'm out biking, listening to some tunes and giving my new bike undies a test run. My outfit is said undies, a pair of gym shorts, and my Lockheed-Martin jersey (it has pockets which is handy for holding my hand pump). My ass was comfortable for sure, though there's not enough padding in the crotch. Probably too much information, but there it is.

Again, I'm out biking and not really taking any particular direction. Up over a bridge, under an overpass, around Fry's and to a side road that takes me past the rock climbing place. This drops me out on a road that goes by the Sunnyvale LinkedIn complex. Had I brought my badge, I could have stopped in and raided the pantry, but I didn't so I didn't. As I'm making a left out of that building and onto the road, I hear a loud "pop" behind me. I didn't need to inspect the bike to know what had happened; I'd been struck by the Curse of Jibjab.

One of my coworkers (well, technically two) have the same bike that I do. He blew a spoke on that bike not once, but twice, on the same wheel even. I pulled myself over to the sidewalk, flipped my bike over and began inspecting every spoke on the wheel. Lo and behold, a spoke has been sheared off.

At this point, I'm somewhere on the order of 2-3 miles away from home. I briefly consider my options and decide that, despite the fact that wheel won't even spin freely anymore, it's good enough under load to make it home. I wasn't really keen to the idea of walking that far back in my biking shoes.

So, I slow rode all the way back, worrying the entire time that my immense weight was going to crush the rest of the spokes. Luckily, it went by without incident. I suppose all in all this isn't such a bad ordeal as I was planning on replacing the wheels with something better anyways, but I don't really like being forced into these situations.

Fate, however, has its own plans.