Hone Schmone

I enjoyed myself so much at Innerleithen that I decided to go back on the uplift day. This is a service that hauls riders to the top of the mountain in a bus, and their bikes in a cattle truck. It’s popular enough that they ran two 50-seater buses and two 10-ton trucks all day. Grinding up a dirt road in a bus packed full of 49 middle-aged guys in Robocop-like body armour is a weird experience.

It was all going great until I crashed on my third or fourth run of the day. I took the wrong line over one of the drop-offs on Cadon Bank, landed in some loose rocks to the side of the trail, and wiped out completely. I wasn’t too badly hurt, and I carried on riding for the rest of the day. I even went down Matador and took a look at the big drop-offs. (That was all I did though: look at them. These guys make the 8-foot drop look easy.)

But then on my ride home one of my pedals just dropped off! The thread in the arm of my brand new Shimano Hone crank was totally gone. I thought maybe I’d wrecked it when I crashed, but if that was the case, why didn’t it break there and then? I’ve heard Internet rumours of other people stripping the threads in Hones and having the steel inserts come out of Saints, but I assumed it would never happen to me! 🙁 Maybe Shimano’s Hollowtech system is based on an Easter egg, with cranks made out of high-tensile chocolate.

The shop where I got them said they’d try to submit it as a warranty claim. But now I’m without my bike while they sort that out, and what if I don’t want another chocolate crankset?! Oh well, commuting on a 38lb freeride bike was getting old anyway, and my Genesis Skyline just arrived. All I need is a pair of my sister’s jeans and I’m good to go.