Can somebody tell me what the BLEEP! BLEEP! happened?
I am still a little shaken - I walked the bike back the last 3 miles today.
Splat! Face plant! Road kill! Yep, you get the picture. I went down hard. I wound up lying on the right side of the lane, and the bike continued forward and left, stopping just short of the center line. It must have been a spectacular crash, as it drew a bit of a crowd. Fortunately, I had multiple layers of cloths on, so no road rash.
I was pushing up a hill. The rear wheel broke loose and slid out from under me to the right. I felt it happen, and immediately tried to correct by stearing in to the slide, but I am pretty sure I hit the ground before my arms moved much at all, if any. I estimate it took about a second from the time I felt the rear tire slide to the right and the time I hit the ground. So why would that happen? I assumed I had a blow out of the rear tire, but no, it was good. Then I went back from the crash site assuming I had hit a wet man hole cover, oil or maybe loose sand or gravel. Nothing. Then I inspected the rear of the bike again. Maybe the bearings froze or something jammed in the brakes. No, nothing. Everything was fine. Maybe a stick or some kind of debris kicked up, caught in the spokes, and jammed against the chain stays. No. Nothing at all. A total mystery. After shaking it off, I was getting back on the bike, and noticed the front wheel was flat. Not low, totally and completely dead. (There was a 1/4 inch slit in the tube, no damage at all to the tire.) So my conclusion is that a front wheel blow out caused my rear wheel to slide out to the right, almost instantaneously dumping me. But why? My more rational side attributes this to inexperience, an amateur with more bicycle than skill.
This accident has me spooked. I have had front wheel blow outs going down hill with both the Tarmac and the Actionbent. I stayed upright through all of them, moving at much higher speeds. My preferred route out of town involves multiple hills. To make up time lost going up, I blast down the back sides, typically hitting 30-45 mph, depending on the hill and how aggressive I am feeling. What is gnawing at me is the possibility that this is a quirk of the design. That it will happen any time the front wheel goes flat. I got dumped due to a front wheel blow out going relatively slowly up hill. What happens to me if I have a front wheel blow out blasting down hill? The same?
I suspect that what happened was that the blow out caused the bike to slow down, causing the rear wheel to unload. If the front wheel was not straight, this could have caused the rear wheel to break free and slide to the right side. But this does not make total sense, as going up hill caused the weight to be biased towards the rear wheel. Nor does it explain why I was able to maintain control riding the Tarmac and the Actionbent under the same situation, except faster and down hill, with the weight biased towards the front.
I did a lot of checking around before getting a Vendetta. The only negatives were relatively minor a) difficult to start from a stop (I found that to be easy) b) difficult remove/replace the front wheel (I agree!). Absolutely nothing about people crashing and burning due to front wheel blow outs. Probably it is just me. But I am still spooked, and it will probably be a long time before I will have the confidence to make use of the performance that the Vendetta offers.
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