My Daily: Broken Chukkers

So the other day, I was riding around and decided to go home and take a break. I opened my garage and left my bike on the floor not thinking about it too much. To my dismay, my mom came home and wasn't looking and ran over my rear wheel. From my room, I heard the wheel getting smashed from my room and ran out to the garage. Words cannot explain how I felt at that moment. I was just couldn't believe it. Luckily, nothing happened to anything else or so it seems at the moment. Later that night, I took my wheel apart and the bad news kept on coming. I was stupid enough to forget to remove my cogs and lockrings before unlacing the wheel. The 14t side was okay and spokes came out fine but the 18t was some trouble, I bent the spokes so they could curl out. After removing all the spokes, I tried with all my might to take the cog and lockring off but no dice. The next day, I went to Epic Bmx to get a new hub (Demolition Mary Kate) and asked them to try to remove the lockring but they too could not do it. After that, I went over to Discovery Bicycle to ask for them to remove it as well as to lace the wheel. They wanted to charge me $108 for spokes and $80 for labor and there was no way in hell I was spending that much. Next, I checked performance and the prices were even higher than that of Discovery bicycles. In their parking lot though, I called Epic and Loc informed me that they charged $25 per wheel and $20 for a bag of spokes. A hell of a lot cheaper than the other two shops. I also think they would do a better job as well because they come from a bmx background. So if you're thinking about getting a wheel build I'd reccomend Epic. Unfortunately, I didn't get to drop it off because I had church but I'm planning to go today. That night I was still faced with the question of how to remove that cog and lockring. This morning I woke up with an idea. I would rotofix one side and use a chain whip to keep the hub stable (duct tapped the handle of the whip to my frame). Luckily, everything worked as I planned. I then used a hammer and a flat head screwdriver to hit the lockring loose. My determination was second to none, I hammered the shit out of that thing. That moment when the lockring finally gave way was unbelievable. I was like a kid on Christmas. Now, I've got my Profile Hub, Demolition Mary-Kate Hub, and Atom lab GI's waiting to be built up. I'm giving 26" a chance I don't feel like I'm going to like it but we'll see if I'm proven wrong.