Because of the adventures I like to take via bike, I put a rear rack on almost every bike when I get it. I procrastinated on putting one on the Ice Cream Truck, but when I saw that the Surly branded rack was on backorder almost everywhere, I knew I had to jump. I found one local shop that had one in stock and picked it up.

Almost immediately I discovered that the bike wasn’t shifting correctly. I would click through the gears and nothing would happen. I clicked back and again nothing would happen. We stopped and took a look and couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. Sometimes it would ‘thunk’ into a different gear, but it was completely unpredictable. I managed to get it into a good enough gear to go the 2.7 miles to our group’s destination, and on the way I had an epiphany as to what happened.

When we first stopped to see what was wrong, my friend Abe said that it almost seemed like my shifting cable was getting stuck in the housing. When I finally parked I looked down and realized that even though my mounting screw for the rack wasn’t pinching the cable, the end of the mounting bar was awfully close. I grabbed a multitool and unscrewed the bolt, and sure enough there was a crushed cable housing. The end of the mounting bar had compressed the cable against the seatstay and squished it tight. Thankfully, once I relieved the pressure the bike shifted normally, but I’m going to need to get this fixed before the Tuscobia 80. I’m not going to trust that it will work fine for miles and miles in the cold.

Sure enough I had also crushed my rear hydraulic brake line, but it appears to not be leaking. Still something I’ll get repaired, but thankfully I was able to finish the ride with functioning brakes and shifters. So the lesson learned here is pay much closer attention to not just where the mounting screw sits, but make sure cables are fully out of the way.