Roadside Mysteries

Sorry to say I have an accident to report. Here’s what happened:

The Black Sheep loaded with musical instruments.

This was the first time I would be going to my drum circle on a bike. That meant that I would be taking a load of percussion instruments from home to a specified location and then riding back at night safely transporting it all back home. In the dark. In the rain.

The picture above shows the Black Sheep bike with a trailer containing a djembe drum, a bag of small percussion instruments, a rug, extra firewood and of course a bag of marshmallows. In the pannier is a custom made left handed banjo.

The setup

The Foothills Drum Circle generally meets twice per month at various locations. This time it would be a fire circle which meant I had to bring a portable fireplace and firewood on one trip and then bring the instruments on a second trip. I made sure to come early to set up the benches, drums and fireplace. Note that Black Sheep bike resting  on the back wall so everyone can see it.

Oh Noooooo !!!!

Sometimes gravity happens and lucky for me the banjo broke the fall so there was no damage to my Black Sheep bike. The banjo however was not so lucky. Note the decapitation of the peg-head. Part of the finger board came off, and two planetary geared tuning pegs were destroyed (expensive!) . But the Black Sheep: Not a scratch! I rode it home that night without a problem.

What have I learned from this experience?

Get a rear view mirror

This is not one of those Pee Wee Herman kind of long handled semi-truck mirrors nor is it the kind that you stick on to your bike helmet. It fits into the end of the handlebar tube so 1) you can see cars coming at you from behind and 2) you can keep an eye on  your junk in the trailer as it falls off into on-coming traffic.

Get a kickstand

Oh sure, kickstands are just not cool.  I would love to install one of those stirrup style stands that were popular in the 1940’s, but for now I’ll settle for this crappy one. At least it’s black and matches the bike.  And the banjo approves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 10:20 am and is filed under Bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.