I had been riding happily around with the new tyres and wheels, testing them over the rough and crumpled tarmac surfaces of the Wiltshire lanes. It seemed to me that there was slightly less of a sharp shock on the edges of the deeper potholes, less feeling that the rim itself was striking the stones. Along one stretch of road the tarmac had sagged and rippled as though the earth beneath was alive and had shifted during the night, looking for all the world like the scaly back of an Alligator. As I rode along it, the tarmac dipped sharply left underneath me, and the bike slid down the slope. There was a sharp crack, and I looked down and then behind be, thinking that a bolt had come loose or a pannier frame snapped. I could see nothing, so I stopped and looked around the bike.
I found that the left hand saddle post had snapped just above a short connecting piece that joined it to the right hand tube.
Although I was near enough to home to walk back, pushing the bike, I was seized with the spirit of the old journey. Asking myself “what would I have done if this had happened to me in Scandinavia?”, I instinctively came up with a bodge involving shock cord and a block of wood that happened to be near to hand.
It got me home, although I rode very gingerly and tried not to sit too hard on the saddle. Unfortunately, the Pedersen is such that it is almost impossible to stand on the pedals; when seated and pedaling, you are almost in a standing position, and the upward rising strap prevents you moving further forwards.
I found that the trouble was caused by a much earlier failure which I had similarly bodged with shock cord, a fracture in the plate at the top of the two sliding saddle tubes which connected the springs and the tensioning wire to the sliding tubes. I had lived removed the shock cord when I tried an old sprung Brookes saddle to see if it would be more comfortable than the narrow triangle of leather. The Brookes had held the broken parts together rigidly, and when I had refitted the original saddle I had not re-applied the bindings. The two seat tubes had been able to move independently, and the lurching shock when the bike slid to the left on the rutted tarmac had thrown all my weight onto the left tube, which had moved outwards as far as it could before snapping just above the point where it was still rigidly attached to the other tube.
Cursing myself for my negligence, I took the bike across to the stores and used the Mig-welder to repair the broken plate. I couldn’t use it to weld the broken tube together, because the metal from which the bike is made is Reynolds 531, which must not be overheated or subjected to too sharp a thermal gradient, otherwise brittleness occurs at the point where the temperature gradient was greatest. The tube couldn’t even be brazed, it would have to be silver-soldered. By luck, or otherwise, the saddle plate was the only piece of ‘normal’ steel in the bike frame.
Very few bike shops now will do anything more then bolt things together, and very few blacksmiths have ever worked on cycle frames. I discussed the problem and possible repair with a Bristol-based frame builder. They said that they had worked on a Pedersen a few months ago, replacing one of the saddle tubes. Coincidence, I wondered? The cost of the tube, they told me, had been £100. I didn’t ask what the labour had been. I knew I couldn’t even afford the new tube, let alone their skill in fitting it. I was going to have to find the money, or learn to mend it myself, which would mean learning how to silver-solder.
After that sad realisation, I assessed the damage, and the bodged repair, and decided to apply a longer and firmer splint, and take the bike out on the road again. It felt no different, in fact, with the repairs to the seat plate, it felt better.
Mad as it might seem, I continued to ride the bike around like this, since there seemed to be no movement at the fracture.
Even though I had a mountain bike, and rode it to and from the gardening jobs whenever possible, I missed the comfort of the Pedersen, the feeling of almost childish glee as I sailed along, high enough to see over most of the hedges, with no strain at all on my wrists and no hunching of the back.
I dreamt of taking it out again for another all-day ride, up to the railway at Cranmore, or down to the seasise at Swanage. But, reluctantly, I had to admit that I had been very lucky on the last such journey not to have a similar failure.
If only I had paid more attention to it over the previous years when it languished, unused. But I had given in to a Mr Toad moment and bought sports cars to go hill-climbing, then rallying, and like Mr Toad, I was now facing a stern battle to reclaim that which had been mine.
I realised that I could no longer ignore the slop in the bottom bracket, or the grating clicking from the pedals. Part of the extra stresses which had caused the tube to crack could have been coming from there.
