Klein must think I'm stupid or insane or both....

This photo works well in an abstract art sense. Maybe I should give up grad school and biking to pursue a career in photography, my subject of choice being broken machines. I wish I could look at this and see beauty, but it only serve to remind me of how Klein, the manufacturer of the bike, turned my hobby into a constant source of worry and irritation. This story has taken three months to play out. I'll try to be brief.

It all started when the fork and front wheel of the bike decided they had had enough riding for one day. I was riding with friends, just reaching the bottom of a 30 mph hill on smooth road, when one in the group spotted the Varna town line. He began sprinting. I, not seeing the sign until after he was going for it, had some ground to make up. I shifted up, got out of the saddle, and started to work hard on the pedals. One second later, I hit the pavement, landing hard on my left hip and elbow, then sliding on my left shoulder, then on my head (helmet), right shoulder, and finishing off squarely on my ass. Beautiful. Needless to say I lost the sprint, but that was the least of my problems (although it still bothered me).

The fork had broken completely off the bike just below the headset. It broke during the sprint, that is while I was still riding the bike. I didn't hit anything, not a car, or a pothole, or a stone, or a fly. It just broke. I've heard of carbon forks failing sometime after they have been in a crash, the damage concealed under the surface until it finally yields catastrophically. My bike, though, had never been in an accident. The largest impact it ever experienced came when I knocked it over in my apartment a few times. So, this looks like a clear warranty issue, right?

Wrong.

Klein told me failure was my fault, although they couldn't tell me exactly how. You should have heard the conversation I had with this Klein guy. It was unbelievable. He insisted that the damage that caused the failure occurred after the fork was manufactured and therefore wasn't Klein's responsibility, and that was that. I tried reasoning with him and got nowhere. I tried threatening a law suit, nowhere. I try personally insulting him (told him he was a moron), nowhere. He just couldn't accept the reality that the fork just broke. Anyway, out of sympathy or something, he offered me a replacement fork, free of charge. Perhaps he was trying to buy my consent that the failure was my fault. I told him to shove it. Klein must think I'm stupid or insane or both. I'm not putting a Klein fork on my bike, free or not, ever.

Okay, so their reation was disappointing, but I decided to get on with my life and fix up the bike on my own. I asked Klein to send the bike back as is and decided to replace the fork with a Reynolds Ouzo Pro. End of story and back on the bike in a couple of days, right?

Wrong again.

The bike came back destroyed in the box. The cranks were broken (imagine the force required to do that!), the rear derailleur was smashed, and the rear triangle of the frame was bent.

The story really just getting started, but I'll have to wait until later to tell the rest.