Schrödinger's Gloves

I was on my way home yesterday on Brünnhild (my preferred spelling) after a necessary shopping trip to town, when I experienced a sudden breakdown. (As an aside, I’m referring to the off road bike, the F650).

It was here, just with WWAAAYYY more trucks behind me!

I was in the left turn lane, with approximately ten tractor trailer units behind me, and the reason I am confident of that number is because I had just passed them all in order not to be stuck at the left turn light behind them for an indeterminate length of time. So like a jerk, there I am, I passed them all and pulled in just behind the first truck, looking toward a quick turn and on the road home. 

The light turned green.

The truck ahead of me pulled into the intersection, I dropped the bike into first gear, let out the clutch and . . . . . . .

Nothing!

The bike wouldn’t move.

Instant karma.

To his credit, the trucker who was now stuck behind me did not simply run me over, or shoot me on the spot, or at least express his frustration with the assistance of his air horn. 

If it had been me in the truck, I’m not sure I would have been able to avoid any or all of those temptations. 

And it was hot, and I was sweating and frustrated and I thought initially that I must be in a false neutral but couldn’t get the bike to drive, even cycling through all the gears.  The engine revved happily but would not propel the damn machine forward even an inch. Single-handedly, I’m stopping millions of dollars of commerce from crossing the only road that goes all the way across Canada  

I squeezed and released the clutch lever, shifted into and out of all the gears, looked at the gear shift lever: was it engaging with the shaft? Was the clutch stuck closed? Had the chain come off the sprocket? 

No, no, no.

The truck idled behind me, and behind him; now 15 trucks. The trucker didn’t get out of his truck, either, to help me get the bike out of the road. It would have been nice, maybe. But I can’t find fault with him. At least he didn’t squish me like a bug.

The light eventually turned yellow, and then red.  I then pushed the bike over to the right side of the road (at this point,  the triangle between the right turn lane and the main lanes). People in cars looked at me as I did this and I imagined their what their response might be if I had dropped the bike in the middle of the road.

I got to a place of safety. Immediately upon my putting the side stand down, the engine stopped.  Of course: it’s still in gear despite not moving forward with the engine on.

I took off my helmet, and my jacket, and my gloves, sweating like a pig. I’m not sure if pigs actually sweat. I can already imagine the phone call to my wife: “could you please hook up a trailer to my truck, come and get me at the intersection of Hwy 11/17 and Red River Road”.  Great. . .

I got the bike up on the centre stand and rolled the rear wheel. I could shift what into and out of what seemed to be all the gears, but the wheel rolled freely, which it shouldn’t if the clutch is not squeezed and the drive train is connected. Maybe I wrecked the transmission, somehow? I looked at the other side of the engine, where the chain and front sprocket are. The chain and front sprocket rolled fine but if I looked closely, I could see that the output shaft from the transmission did not. Weird. 

Hmm, how is the sprocket supposed to stay on?

Nutless sprocket

As you can see, I’ve now slid the sprocket back on. . . So you tell that something is clearly amiss.

Ok, so if I can slide the sprocket on, but it won’t stay, I’ve got an ongoing problem. There’s a big nut that is supposed to hold this all together. Wonder what happened to that nut? I look at the road where forward progress had ended.  Is it there? Nope.  In the parking lot of where I’d just been?  I wonder if I got extremely lucky, and it’s somewhere on the “bash plate”, that protects the engine from damage from below?

I got lucky.

To my good fortune, it was immediately below the sprocket, lying on the engine protection plate. I put it on as tightly as I could with my by now thoroughly greasy and blackened fingers.  I wonder if this will hold on until I get home? What if it comes off again at highway speed? That would not be a pretty picture: rear-wheel lockup at speed equals immediate loss of control. I stopped to check it for tightness multiple times on my way home.

(Other questions, such as: how did this come off? How do I make sure it stays on from here on in? would come later.)

I dropped Brünnhild off the center stand, rolled into the intersection across the crosswalk, and when the light turned, roared off down the road.

Blessed cool breeze, finally!

But now I’m driving down the road, with no gloves on.  I wonder, did I leave my gloves on the ground at the intersection where I was working on my bike, or was I smart enough to put them into the pannier?  As I’m on the highway, no easy turn around to check although I could have looked, I guess, to see if they were in the pannier. 

But until I checked, the gloves were in a quantum state of simultaneous existence and non-existence, a superposition of universes, both lying on the sidewalk where I had fixed my bike, and in my panniers like Schrödinger's cat: a creature both alive and dead at the same time, in its box with the radioactive particle and the poison, whose quantum fate would only be brought about upon observation by a conscious mind. The act of looking makes the event occur, retroactively! Schrödinger's gloves, indeed.

But also, why did the nut come off? Had I under-torqued it? Was I supposed to use anti-seize? Is there a cotter pin or safety wire that I had neglected to use? Had I only been lucky, this far?

I later spent some time on the internet.  There is supposed to be a washer between the nut and the sprocket. The washer has little grooves where it engages the splines on the shaft; once tight, the edge of the washer is supposed to be bent against the side of the nut, so that the nut cannot turn.  Like so:

I ordered one today.  Cost for the washer; $5.99.  Cost for shipping and handling: $17.00.

Hopefully it will arrive some time next week.

 And the gloves?

The gloves survived.

I also made it home with chain on bike and sprocket in place.