Shot in the Face! And you're to blame! You give…

For those that don’t know — what, you’re not following my every action on my blog, my facebook, twitter, myspace, and SMS messages? — I have been riding my bike to work & back for the better part of a couple of months now, weather permitting (and sometimes not). Don’t start praising me all at once now, I only live like maybe a mile from my work, so… it’s not like it’s a great exercise routine or anything, it just happens to be close enough to be time-wise, I can actually do it faster on bike that in the truck. There’s other pluses too, actually: Being the manager at work means sometimes having to escort angry people out. Angry people don’t care that the situation’s their fault, they just want to get even. Hard to key a truck when it’s not there, right? Right?

Anyway, the bike I bought was a Specialized mountain bike. Nothing too serious, I’m not racing, just having fun. I didn’t want to spend more than $400-$500 and get more than a mid-level bike, BUT I did want to get the most features at that price point. I got it, in the way of Disc Brakes (yeah, on a bicycle) and front tunable suspension forks. It’s great in theory, but just recently I found myself ouching over the suspension.

I was riding to work and hopped up over a curb. When I landed, I heard a ruckus and felt a sharp jolt/pain attack my right shoulder & face. What the hell was that? What the f*ck just happened? I stop the bike and turn around to see a coil spring and accompanying hardware rolling around on the ground behind me. I look down at my front tire and what do I see? A disassembled front tunable suspension fork.

The adjustment mechanism for the suspension is basically a nut you turn on the top of the right fork tube to compress or decompress the spring a little. Well I guess it worked its way loose on the ride to work, and when I came down on top of it full-force, it popped, and my weight + the pressure of the compression sent it all sailing towards me. Towards my face. I mean hell, you sat on a bike recently? The fork tubes point right at your friggin’ face, man. They need a damned safety catch or something. 

I mean, I could have shot my eye out!

Anyway. Don’t worry about me, I got it all back together. It was sort of my fault because I was trying to increase the dampening which means loosening the adjustment mechanism. I guess I adjusted it a little too loose, eh? Looks that way.

Still though: safety catch. Preferrably not with the customer’s face. That’d be my overall recommendation, Specialized…