To follow up on yesterdays post concerning this past weekends Very Small Rocks outing, the top speed of a mosquito is as follows:I guess Im slower than I thought if I cant avoid them on climbs, though they dont say whether thats a laden or an unladen mosquito.[The AIs take on A sign in the style of Terry Gilliam that says Obligatory Monty Python Reference.' Iconography is accurate but style is not remotely Gilliamesque.]Also, unfurling saddle roll aside, the Farbman performed impeccably and I didnt have a single complaint about it, so naturally I started tinkering with it pretty much as soon as I got home:Specifically, I decided to change the tireseven though they had plenty of traction on the Very Small Rocks sections while also feeling surprisingly fast on the road. These tires are a very good fit for the bike (theyre cyclocross tires and its a cyclocross bike, funny how that works), so Ive been telling myself Id leave them on there until they wear out; however, theyre easily over 25 years old, and the sheer age of the things has been preying on my mind. Plus, I go back and forth between really liking the way they look (cylcocrossers of a certain age will fondly recall the distinctive Michelin hue) and really not liking the way they look, and right now Im in a not-liking-the-way-they-look phase.So on Sunday morning I headed out for a ride on the newly-installed black tires, and I flatted almost immediately, but not immediately enough to be able to simply walk back home and switch bikes in less time than it would take me to repair the flat. So I went to do just that, only to discover the puncture was on the rim bed side of the tube and seemed to have been caused by a slightly exposed spoke hole. I wasnt about to peel off the rim tape and reapply it lest it lose its adhesion in the process and leave me rim-tapeless and just far enough away from home for the walk to be really annoying, so I patched the tube, inflated the tire, rode the bike home, and got another one.This one:And yes, it absolutely did occur to me when all this was happening that if I put nearly as much time into important things as I do riding bikes and tinkering with bikes and switching between one bike and another and deciding which one of my many bikes to bring on vacation with me then I might actually be successful in life.But that would be a lousy trade-off, since what good is success if you dont have time to ride?In any case, with a fresh bike under me I was once again ready to ride, but the city didnt want to let me go, for the path that takes you out of the park was strewn with fallen trees from Friday nights storm, which were still down as of yesterday:You can tell how well traveled this path is by how quickly a fully packed-in trail formed around it:Then yesterday I returned to the Farbman in order to fix it properly, and as I was peeling the tape off the rim bed this fell out:Thats a piece of the socket that sits in the spoke hole, and Ive seen plenty of reports of them breaking, but Id never experienced it myself until now:I know nothing of the history of these wheels, having bought them used sometime last year from a non-profit bike shop. All I know is that they were perfectly true when I got them and they remain so even now. I also dont know if this is an Eh, whatever problem or a The spokes about to pull through and youre about to die problem, though my suspicion is its closer to the former. But if you have experience with failed Mavic Open Pro eyelets I encourage you to Fred-splain in the comments, and in the meantime Ive re-applied the tape, re-mounted the tire, and marked the compromised spoke so I can keep any eye on it. (There is no visible cracking around the eyelet as of yet, and for all I know that eyelets been broken for years already.) For now Ill keep riding it, and eventually Ill replace the rim, but if someone can convince me Im about to die maybe Ill stop riding it and replace the rim sooner.As for the Roadini, Ive been back on it for the past couple of days, which has afforded me an opportunity to make a side-by-side comparison between it and the Farbman as the Vacation Bike Showdown continues:Apart from being so well sorted out that even I cant convince myself to continue tinkering with it, the Roadini is the logical vacation choice if for no other reason than its so stable thanks to the longer wheelbase and other geometrical factorsnot that the Farbman is even remotely unstable, but it is a bike that was designed for riding really fast through twists and turns in grassy fields, whereas my vacation riding consists of riding up and down what in New York State do qualify as actual mountains, and the Roadini is objectively better suited for that. Yes, now that Ive triple-ized the Farbman and double-ized the Dini Ive got lower climbing gears for the steepest Very Small Rocks climbs, but really this should be low enough:Oh, I did do one little bit of tinkering, because after I originally put the rear tire on I noticed I installed it backwards, which couldnt possibly mean anything on what is essentially a slick tire. But just in case, while I was in tire-swapping mode yesterday, I flipped it around to the proper direction:Incredibly, the decrease in rolling resistance and increase in cornering grip was immediately noticeable.Just kidding.