"Good News and Bad News"

So jury duty got out a little early yesterday (Thursday) and we were sent home. I got stuck on a 15 day criminal trial and it has totally re-arranged my schedule for the next month.

Anyways with the extra time I figured I'd go and do a few Whiting laps (Live Oak). My last ride at Whiting I had noticed my rear shock was not locking out. I would put the lever into the position and it wouldn't stick. I figured I could look at it later and fix it.

I get down to the bike and notice a greasy substance all around the shock. Uh oh. I look at the lever and notice there is _nothing_ to adjust. No screws or levers or anything. I start freaking out at this point because I can't get the shock to lock out. It's on "full suspension" mode, which is bad.

I refuse to climb any hill with my bike's rear suspension on. You lose so much energy to the shock as you bob up and down. I want my bike to be a hard tail (no suspension in the back) while I climb.

Anyways, I take the bike into Rock'n'Road and I get the "I have good news and bad news ..." line. I never did get the good news come to think of it.

The short of it is that my rear Fox Triad shock is toast and needs to be sent back to Fox to get re-built. _Not cool_. I had planned to do a pre-ride of Counting Coup this Saturday and I obviously wanted to ride it on the bike I would be racing on.

Picture of my shock that is now dead:



I asked the guy how much a new shock was and he said 400 dollars. Not good. To send the shock back would be about 80-90 dollars. A huge difference.

So I had the guy take off my pedals so I could put them on my Trek 6700 hard tail.

Picture of my "old" bike that I'm now riding:



Now I'm stuck with my old hard tail while my other bike gets surgery for a week or two. I'm not happy about it, but what can you do? I put 1,800+ miles on that shock and I suppose it was going to explode eventually.

I'm going to research other shocks just in case. We'll see what happens ...