On 12/17/2018 6:10 PM, Mark J. wrote:

[*] At ~24 years, the Univega developed large cracks in the unicrown
fork, noticed only b/c the crown sagged and pushed the fender down onto
the top of the tire.Â* Angels look out for fools and children, so there
was no crash.

Wow. You were lucky. We had a crash when the front fork blades of our
tandem simultaneously snapped off upon hitting some moderately rough
pavement. Turns out the custom builder, Jim Bradford (of Georgia, USA,
now supposedly living in Canada) had used track forks with wall
thickness 1/3 of what tandem forks should have had.

I got about five seconds of indefinite warning, the sound of the front
fender lightly scraping the tire. Bradford had built the bike with
insufficient fender clearance, so it was a familiar sound. I just didn't
know it meant something serious this time.

We did go down pretty hard, but we were riding only about 10 mph waiting
for others to catch up, so no serious injuries. Do I complain to the
angels for sleeping on the job, or thank the angels it wasn't worse?

--
- Frank Krygowski