Goodbye Tweety!

Tweety until hours ago

This past Saturday was my last ride on Tweety, my beautiful nineteen-year-old steel road bike. I'm devastated today after discovering two lateral fatigue cracks in the frame... one across the top tube and one across the underside of the down tube. Both cracks are surprisingly straight, and are located just beyond the points of the lugs. I'm still in shock.

The straight line across the tip of the lug point is the first crack

A closer look at the crack

This is the crack on the underside of the down tube

A closer view

I thought the line across the top tube was just a buildup of touch-up paint after a shoddy bit of cleanup I did after a crash this past spring. But as I was disassembling the bike for an overhaul after last weekend's rainy, muddy ride in the Berkeley Hills I noticed the second crack on the underside of the down tube. I still wasn't sure they were cracks, until I looked closely in direct sunlight through Jen's 10X loupe (magnifier). Then I could clearly see jagged, rusty cracks deep between the fractured paint. The cracks go all the way through the tube wall. It's fairly apparent that these cracks have been developing for the past year at least.

This loss is hard to wrap my head around, but when I think of how fortunate I am to notice the damage before a catastrophic failure on the road, it almost blows my mind. That kind of failure would be bad enough for me alone, but what about the riders in the pack behind me?! This is sad but I'm choosing to feel lucky it worked out this way. I paid sixteen-hundred bucks or so to have Tweety built and I got to have a blast riding for nineteen years... that's about $84 a year.

I had this frame built in 1995 by Ron Cooper. Ron brazed Tweety together using Reynolds 853 OS (oversized) tubing into his gorgeous custom lugs. For each of the first sixteen years I likely rode Tweety only about 2500 miles. By 2012 my mileage increased to 4000, then 5500 in 2013 and as of late October in 2014 I'm just beyond 6000 miles. In total I've ridden Tweety over 50-thousand miles.

As things have turned out, this past year was a fantastic swan song for Tweety. Coming off of a 27-year break from racing, Tweety and I started over in cat 5, upgrading through cat 4, doing twenty two races, with one win, two 3rd-place, two 4th, two 5^th and an 8^th place finish. Along the way I accumulated 21 upgrade points, so if I was completely nuts, I could move on up to cat 3 before next season... but I'm not that nuts yet.

It was challenging enough, drawing stares, often, the only racer in the pack on a heavy steel bike with primitive 9-speed components. At least it was Tweety, who generated at least a few respectful compliments from fellow rolleurs. Now I'll harvest all of Tweety's components, and install them onto my eighties, Taiwan-built Raleigh that is now promoted from spare to primary road bike.

Well so long dear Tweety! You were an ass-kicker!