Yesterday I wrote about my own little piddling troubles with my bike. VIsiting Fat Cyclist today for the first time in a while (prompted by a shout out from the ever excellent Bike Snob NYC) put things in perspective.

Fatty’s blog is a must-read these days, and that’s all I’m going to say about that right now.

It’s been a while since my last post, I know. We’ve been busy here at Gear Ratios Central, and with the Tour de France on, a lot of my free time got poured into watching TV. But we’re back now, although with less than stellar news.

So let me just get right to it. Last Monday afternoon, a trusted friend headed for that great parcours in the sky (or, more literally, the dirty floor of our basement). This was by far the best bike I’ve every owned, it rode like a dream and we shared a lot of adventures here in Belgium. It’ll be missed.

I’m not sure exactly what the sequence of events was, but while riding out by Overijse, about 20 k from home, the seat stay broke, taking my derailleur, right rear dropout and a couple of spokes on my Ksyriums along with it. Fortunately I was riding with another American I know here in Brussels, and his wife was able to drive out and bail us out. Otherwise, it would have been a long walk home for me.

Here are a few photos of the damage:

Busted Dropout

Broken Seat Stay

So I’ve been mourning the loss of a great bike and trying to put together a backup plan while things get sorted out. Fortunately, Cannondale has a good reputation for taking care of customers with broken bikes, and my pals over at the awesome Exeter Cycles have gone out of their way to help me out. But it remains to be seen what exactly is going to happen.

In the meantime, I’m back up and running on an older bike, but it’s hardly the same. Hopefully my fitness comes along anyway, and soon enough it’ll be ‘cross season. Maybe the implosion of one bike provides an excuse to think about buying another?

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I haven’t been writing a ton about cycling lately, because it’s been a mess lately — a few weeks ago I crashed and strained my intercostal muscles, which left me pretty much unable to breathe hard enough to actually ride my bike, then, when that started to get better, my bike started going nuts, ending up only marginally rideable until I can get myself a new rear derailleur (my potentially-imploding wheels aren’t helping either).

But I did have one really good ride this week where I made it down to the Inclined Plane of Ronquières which is one of the more bizarre and amazing engineering projects I’ve ever seen. Check back here for the whole story on that in a couple of days.

For now, I’ve got to share this completely awesome video — Abbey Road and London Calling in Rubik’s Cubes. Art does not get any better.

And if that’s not enough for you, Invader has done others as well.