and not a single soul escape

UPDATED below

Friends, this is too important to merely tweet. I was walking in downtown Providence (or downcity, or… whatevs), when I came upon this scene:

The mainstream media may be afraid to report this, but it’s obvious, the nudist rollerblader rapture has begun.

May god have mercy on our souls.

In other news, I wore out the front rim on my 6-year-old commuter bike. The brakes were feeling a little funny and then….

BLAM!!! My rim exploded. I was quite surprised. And now I know what it feels like when a rim is about to go.

——

UPDATE !

I should explain what it feels like when a rim is about to blow: The rim begins to warp and I could feel it in the brakes – they sort of “pulsed” as I slowed down. As it got worse, the brake lever would actually move as the brake calipers went over the more warped sections of the rim. Since the rim material is so thin, there isn’t enough of it to hold the shape of the rim so it also starts getting far out of true. I could see my wheel start to wobble a little and I thought “I guess I need to bring it into the shop soon and get this wheel trued.” The brakes were pulsing a little bit, then they started pulsing more and more.. and then BLAM! I was on Commonwealth Ave in Boston at the time which can be a very busy street. Fortunately, I was in a bike lane, going about 10 MPH and there wasn’t much traffic. I was able to slow down using just my rear brake and pull over to check out the damage. There were some surprised pedestrians on the sidewalk who asked, “Did you just get hit?” “No,” I replied, “I just blew out my rim!”