Well, dear readers, every tour has its high points and its low points, and I sure hope today was this trip’s nadir. Here begins my tale of a series of Very Unfortunate events..
- Packed up out of the hotel and grabbed breakfast before the pharmacy opened at 9. Everything was looking towards a great day of pretty easy riding
- I spent twenty minutes searching for one of my medications all over the Walgreens, convinced I had somehow dropped it or thrown it away, when it turns out there was a miscommunication with the pharmacist and he had not actually given it to me. Not a big deal, but the beginning of my stress level rising
- I admittedly am guilty of great hubris for thinking, as I rolled out of town on another beautiful bike path along the Arkansas River, that everyone was going so smoothly and that I had zero mechanical issues with my bike in 2100 minutes – not even so much as a flat on the tires that had 2000 miles on them before I started!
- I noticed my chain wasn’t running as smoothly as it had been – it was skipping around every so slightly. I was about to turn around and ride three miles back into turn to the bike shop when I finally diagnosed the problem: one of the plates on a chain link was slightly bent. Aha, I thought, I can fix this pretty easily! I got out my trusty chain tool and removed the bad link, thinking it would be no problem to make it the fifty miles to Pueblo and one of its several bike shops to assess if I needed a new chain. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for diagnosing and quickly resolving the problem in less than ten minutes!
- When I got to Florence, I noticed a cool bike shop/rock shop and decided to take a peek inside. The guy who ran it was cool and very talkative. He used to do custom Harley motorcycles, but got out of that biz when his clients started going broke and “I was suddenly in the storage business”. Now he collects old bikes from all over and fixes them up. He had a huge collection of bikes, including a Finnish army bike from 1918! Anyway, this shop becomes relevant later
- There was a long, gradual climb out of Florence, but I was making great time and feeling pretty good (despite the previously mentioned insane drivers) when just before noon, “clunk!” my chain broke. I checked and it looked like another link was damaged, probably I had not gotten the pin set right when I fixed it before. No big deal, I just popped off that link as well.
- Half a mile after that and my chain fell completely off. I removed another link, but while threading it through my bike, I lost the pin. After some attempts to use a pin from the link I had just removed (I found it nearly impossible to push in a new pin with only two hands) I decided to try removing another link. At this point I was hot and frustrated and moving faster than I should have been, and managed to bend the pin setter on my chain tool. And now I was really in a pickle, because I had no way to get my chain on my bike, and bikes don’t work so well without a chain
- My first thought was to try and skip-push (like a scooter) my bike the two miles to the next town, but I checked the map and realized the only thing in that town was a post office. So I figured my best bet would be to try and hitch a ride back to the funky bike shop in Florence. I called and verified that he had a nine speed chain, and threw out my thumb. I thought it wouldn’t be too hard to catch a lift, since it was only about 12 miles and literally everyone on that highway was heading there, so it shouldn’t be too hard. I was wrong. After about 40 minutes with my thumb out, and escalating to the point where I had my busted chain in my thumb hand, and the other hand holding a sign saying “Florence” and a twenty dollar bill, truck after truck passed by. The weather was starting to look like rain, so I figured I might as well start trying to coast downhill back towards Florence, pathetically holding my thumb and busted chain out as I rolled. I actually made it about 3 miles this way (half coasting, half walking up the rolling hills) when finally someone stopped, and gave me a lift to the shop. Salvation! Everything would be fine now!
- So, the guy at the shop was super nice, and I appreciate him helping me out, but I asked him a few times to just pop out a link and put my own chain back on, but he insisted that the whole chain was shot, and instead put on a slightly used one. He charged me five bucks, I gave him ten, but as soon as I rolled out I could tell something was wrong. I went back and we found one of the links was stiff. We worked out it, and I took off again.
- At this point it was 3:00 (over three hours after the initial break) and I hadn’t eaten lunch and had gone through all my water, so I just wanted to get into downtown Florence for some food. In just that half mile, I realized that this ‘new’ chain wasn’t working well – most likely because it was a thicker chain made for a seven or eight speed drivetrain. I didn’t want to take it back to the funky spare parts shop, and decided it was safer to backtrack 9 miles to the small bike shop in cañon city vs trying to ride 40 to Pueblo. I called the shop, and confirmed they had a proper, new 9 speed chain… But now it was 3:15, and they close at 4
- 9 miles in 45 minutes isn’t that hard over the mostly flat terrain, but I knew it was going to be tight, especially since the chain kept skipping, auto shifting, and even occasionally getting stuck when I shifted. So I rode as fast as I could, ignoring the trucks that had no regard for my life or the lives of the oncoming traffic.
- I finally made it into cañon city with about 12 minutes to spare, when, while turning on to main street, and only three blocks from the bike shop, I shifted and the chain got stuck again. I did what I had been doing.. pedaling backwards and shifting around to try to get it unstuck, when CRUNCH! pieces of my rear derailleur went flying through the air! At that point, I was at my wit’s end after everything that had happened and having not eaten anything for seven hours…I didn’t even try to figure out what had happened or collect the pieces of my surely ruined derailleur from the road. i just skip-pushed my bike to the shop as fast as I could and collapsed into a defeated heap
- As I waited for the mechanic, I assessed the damage: the chain was looped multiple times between my cassette and spokes, the half of the derailleur remaining was bent to hell, and at least one spoke was wrecked. Unfortunately, this shop didn’t have a derailleur that would work in stock. I called a shop in Pueblo, and they have one, but they are only open tomorrow. The mechanic came up with a plan wherein I return tomorrow, he tries to repair my wheel and sets me up with a nine speed chain, but shortened so my bike essentially becomes a single speed, and then I try to ride the fifty miles to Pueblo like that with hopefully enough time to get the repair done. Long odds, but thems the cards I’ve been delt
- The only silver lining is that, while eating my feelings with a much-needed pizza, I remembered that Ed, the westbounder I met the other day, had told me he had stayed with a great warmshowers host here. And so, after some back and forth texts, here I am at Matt and Gina’s wonderful house. Well, Gina moved to the Netherlands, and Matt is soon to follow, but in the meantime he said he’s hosted about 20 people so,far this summer, including a few westbounders I had met earlier in the trip! We had a few beers, I took a shower and managed to get most of the grease off of me, and now I am staying up too late writing this overly-detailed post. Good night!