One spoke is an accident. Two is not a coincidence. And two different mechanics saying, “Your rim is worn out—stop laughing!—your rim is worn out. You need a new one,” plus the cost of replacing a single spoke—let alone a full wheel rebuild, and when the hubs are also shot, meant bonus! New wheels! Minus side, I indeed cannot afford them, nor the replacement cassette, nor the replacement brake pads and cables.

Nonetheless, suck it up and all. I did my homework, cased multiple options, narrowed it down to a couple, then found one of them for 2/3 the normal price online, and yesterday a well fancy pair of Fulcrum Racing 5 CX arrived. A walk to bike shop and back, cassette fitted, tires swapped on (and let’s pause for a minute and remember the set of Challenge Strada Bianca I got a couple of weeks ago), now just recable-ing and doing the brakes.

And let’s remember six years of fucking glorious riding, bashing through forests, especially my favourite one around Flughafen Tegel, snow, rain, hail, ice, slush, mud, wild boars, foxes, falcons, dust and grit in warm summer mornings, endless laps of Tempelhofer Feld, thousands of kilometres on those old wheels now boxed away (I’ll probably bring them out when I want to practice trials skills or something equally rim-destroying). Cheers old wheels, you were mint.