One more for the trophy room

That's not right...

This is the third rear derailleur I've mangled in my roughly 15 years of on again/off again cycling.  One every five years would be a pretty good average, I suppose, if there weren't long layoffs thrown in there.  Still, not to bad I guess.

The first one was a stick that got caught in my rear wheel while I was riding the John Muir trails in Wisconsin with some friends.  Total damage was a mangled cage and a busted derailleur hanger.  I was able to rig it up as a single speed long enough to get to some pavement, at which point my chain snapped.  My friends took turns pushing me the mile and a half back to the trail head, two pushing while one rested.  They got the workout that day.

Fast forward a couple years and I was doing a race on the same trail system.  A couple miles from the finish my bike started shifting crappy when suddenly...  SnapCracklePopCrunchGrind.  The upper (carbon) body sheared off at the pivot.  No time to fix this one, so I ran the last mile or so to the finish.  I still earned bragging rights by finishing 10 seconds ahead of my teammate ;-)

I wish I could say I had a good story for what happened yesterday.  Nope, not so lucky this time.  After five hours I found myself just outside of town, trying to talk myself out of adding another short one hour loop, when my rear wheel locked up and I came skidding to a halt.  Not exactly sure how since I wasn't shifting, nor was I in my largest cog, but the derailleur had gotten tangled up in my spokes.  I yanked it back out and limped home, somewhat relieved to have a decent excuse for not meeting my original six hour commitment.

Total damage:

- The derailleur is pretty much shot and needs to be replaced.

- The rear wheel now rubs the brake pad.  No biggie there though since I bought it used and was taking it in to get trued this week anyway.

- The derailleur hanger looks like it may be bent.  Gonna let the bike shop take care of that one.

I'm guessing it'll be a week before the Surly is ready to roll again.  Looks like I'll be getting some quality road riding in until then. 

One final note:  The remains of those first two derailleurs were combined to form a new, more powerful super derailleur that is still being used on my hardtail today.