Some of you who read this blog often may know that I write a regular Sunday column, called Weekends with Womack. But this week, my column appeared on Saturday instead.
Oops!
I hit the wrong button (publish instead of preview), and sent it out on its way to the cyber-feminist-fitness community. And I couldn’t figure out how to get it back.
So in honor of my mistake, here are some pics of bike-related boo-boos. To err is human, but please don’t ride with these.
A (somewhat) common mistake is a bike constructed with the front fork facing backwards. Here’s what it SHOULD look like:
In this picture, however, the front fork was installed backwards. This is not good.
By the way, most of the pictures come from this website; many of them are only funny to serious bike geeks, but check it out and see what you think.
This bike is fine, except that the handlebars were installed upside down. This means you can’t really use the brakes. Uh, oh.
Someone brought this bike into a bike shop, complaining about how the brakes didn’t work. The mechanic had to explain gently that wedged between the brake levers was a suboptimal storage place for the giant kryptonite lock.
Sometimes people accidentally put their helmets on backwards; I’ve seen this in nature, and it’s well documented online. There’s this guy:
This picture below is actually from a website that is supposed to explain proper helmet use. Unfortunately, what the site says is that her helmet is improperly adjusted. If by that they mean “the parents totally put the kid’s helmet on backwards”, then I guess that’s right.
In case you were wondering, here’s a diagram illustrating both correct and incorrect helmet configurations.
Yes—in the real world, errors abound. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with them, too.
See y’all next week!
