always carry a sharp knife

[jape]

I come from a generation and time when most men of all classes and backgrounds carried a pocket-knife of some sort ... and used them for this and that daily. Despite the politically correct nonsense of such tools now being illegal in some definitions or at least frowned upon, I still carry one and always will.

Today on the freeway I rode over a plastic bag concealing a paperback book and a bread roll of all things that someone had dropped, it got jammed between chain, wheel rim and frame and nearly brought me off as I skidded onto the verge. It had all burnt from the 100 kph friction in parts and the plastic and dough and glues in the binding had congealed with the oil from frame into the paper and cardboard and made what was like a resin encrusted mass that hardened as it cooled around the frame and chain!

I tried pushing with a long branch from the roadside, levering in all directions with tyre lever with all my weight and strength to no avail. Looked like I would have to remove back wheel and bugger, that spanner was still at home on the bench. Stuck.

Until I chopped through the grapefruit sized lump bit by bit, taking ten minutes, with my trusty sharp spiderco knife. Took me nearly twenty minutes in all to remove it, it was so hard jammed into the bike! Always carry a sharp knife folks.