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Broken Skewer

Well, it looks like I have more bicycle parts I need to buy. Thursday morning on my way to work I was about 4.5 miles into my ride when suddenly it was like someone slammed on my back brakes. Right as I came to a stop I heard a ping and my skewer shot all the way into the middle of the street.

OK so I figured I'd just walk to Buck's Bikes which was about half a mile away and see if I could get a new skewer to finish my ride. However when I arrived at Buck's I found that not only were they not open, but they didn't even have a sign that said what their hours were. Since it was only 8:45am I figured they probably opened at 9:00am and decided to take a look at my rear wheel. When I removed my wheel from the bike I quickly realized what had happened. It looked like the bearings had locked up which caused the axel to spin, which caused the drive side locknut to unscrew. The locknut unscrewing put pressure on the frame until the skewer broke under tension. So the real question was why did the bearings lock up? And when does Buck's open? The Giant rep was kind enough to tell me the answer to the second question 10:00 which led me to decide I should just walk the final 3.5 miles to work.

Today I decided I should take a closer look at my bearings to see if I could figure out why they were locked up. The non-drive side cone and lock nut were still locked together, and after breaking them loose I found that the cones were just crazy tight. I have no idea how that happened I swear it defies physics, and that has me a little worried. You see if the non-drive side cone and locknut were still tight that meant that the drive side cone had to spin clockwise until the bearings locked up. Hmm, OK now that I write this I guess it doesn't defy physics since the bearing on cone friction could potentially cause that to happen. Either way it is still strange. Hopefully if I get a new skewer this won't happen again.