When I'm riding my bike, I don't like to stop. This is beyond a simple idiosyncracy, this borders on neurosis. For instance, I will ride along for miles sweating profusely having overdressed rather than stop and take a layer off. Similarly, I'll ride along freezing my butt off while I've got a perfectly good windbreaker in my bag. The not wanting to stop thing also applies to mechanical problems.
I went for several weeks with my index shifting maladjusted. Every time I'd get on the bike, the first time I'd shift I'd remember that the shifter was off. To fix it, of course, would have required me to stop the bike, get off and spend 3 seconds turning the barrel adjuster. So I'd decide to fix it when I got home. Of course, when I got home I completely forgot about it, and the cycle was repeated for about two weeks, until one day I made the ultimate sacrifice, stopped the bike, got off and fixed it.
A similar problem occurred the other day as I was riding to work. I heard a telltale thump, thump, thump coming from the rear wheel. Now, I've played this scene often enough to know what thump, thump, thump noises are about. This means that the tire is about to blow off the rim. But it was a particularly cold nasty day and I really didn't feel like mucking around with it. Besides, I'd already successfully ridden several miles with it without explosion. Maybe explosion wasn't imminent after all. And it wasn't, since I got all the way to Imnan Square before it actually exploded. By then I was so close to work, that there was nothing to do but ride on the rim. In this particular case, it wouldn't have mattered too much if I had stopped, since there was a rather long gash in the sidewall, which I suspect was due to the brakes being misaligned. I discovered that on the way home when the spare tube blew out almost immediately. More riding on the rim practice.
I'd gotten quite adept in ignoring noises in my car. The solution is simply to turn the radio up until the annoying noise can't be heard. The moral equivalent for biking is to turn my walkman up.
Incidentally, The brakes hitting the tire noise is one you should pay heed to. It's a Rather easy one to ignore, since it only happens when braking (I practice I try to avoid, like stopping). However if you ignore the shushing sound of brakes hitting sidewall, this will eventually be followed by the thump, thump, thump noise and the very soon, the BAM noise.
Then there's the graunch, graunch noise you hear emanating from the freewheel. When you hear this one, there's a better than even chance the freewheel will soon start freewheeling in both directions. This makes for mighty slow going.
There's a similar but quite distinct graunch, graunch noise that is a cry for help from a chain that's endured too many get wet, get cruddy, get dry, rust, cycles. This one I've managed to ignore for thousands of miles, but I'm thinking I should add a chain tool to my bag of tricks.
Then there's the ssssss noise that usually means the wheel is touching something it shouldn't. I ignored one of these long enough once to wear a nice hole in my commuting duffel bag. Well, maybe this is a feature, it does air the thing out a bit.
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