I was cleaning the garage today and, as part of the process, decided to pop the connector off for the tagalong that's supposed to go to Erik. I started to pull the seat off and, well....you can see the results below. I've had my mountain bike longer than I've had my daughter. I put thousands of miles on it each year (bit of hyperbole because it conjures up an image of 3000+ miles, but I suspect I put a good 1200+ on it each year and I know I had a year where I put well over 2000 on it), and used it for a whole season back when I was at my most active with TCBC, so it's had a good life. I could weld it,
Bicycling magazine recommends finding a professional framebuilder, but that will probably cost me more than the bike cost in the first place. I could just swap out the frame and keep all the bits and pieces, but then I'm constrained to fiinding something that fits what I already have, which might be difficult given it's a decade-plus old.
So it's time to go bike shopping. Maybe it's a good thing, fall sales being here and all. And perhaps, if I indulge in a bit of magical thinking, my car accident prevented me from putting four additional months on my mountain bike, which means I wasn't riding it full tilt during a seat snap, potentially breaking my skull and putting a seat post into my posterior.
Here's the view of the frame where it snapped. I could probably go all DIY and figure out how to mount the seat right into that hole without so much as a weld, but once again, that seems like more effort than it's worth. Not to mention, probably dangerous.
