Most of the time, bicycle repairs on the adventuring road are manageable and quick. I've patched, for example, my tire tube at least five times since leaving home. However, there are a few critical bike injuries that necessitate drastic repairs. A broken wheel axil, dented frame, wrecked bottom bracket; these instances of mechanical impairments demand attention. These are not trip-ending bike injuries but still strong enough to bring your travels to a serious halt. What's more, the new parts you likely need to make mends are only found in the bike shops of large cities often several days out. Needless to say, you don't want any of these in the middle of the hot Sumatran jungle or under one of its tropical downpours.
But you can't always get what you want. My bike got hurt one day, bad.
The reason this injury, which I'll describe shortly, hurt so much is because the damaged happened a week after resting a few days in Krui. There, I took the time to refresh my bike; I re-trued my wheels, aligned my brakes, pumped my tires, adjusted the panniers, oiled the chain, and tightened down all the bolts. She ran beautifully. So when it happened, it hurt like seeing vandal graffiti over that newly pained building, like a side swipe dent in a week old car.
The hurt compounded feverntly from there because, against any desire, the damage left me alone in the middle of the discommodious Sumatran forest. No one to help, no where to go, and not a single bike shop for at least a three day's ride through unforgiving hills. I was, as they say, seriously up s**t creek.
This is what happened. About a week before, I had replaced my brake-shifters with the bar-end types since the former blew out and cracked on me. No the largest problem since I packed a set of bar-end Shimano Ultegras with me from home. This also meant replacing the shifter cables. Again, no big hassle. And with no cable cutters on hand, I left the extra cable at the end of my rear derailed free. (Some of you might see where I'm going with this, but hold on).
She road fine as was. Now flash forward a week, leaving Krui. About a few hours in to the day's ride, one if those critical injuries I was talking about happened and I was I indeed up the creek without a paddle.
Did you guess that the surplus cable came back in, got caught in my rear cassette, pulled my derailleur into my spokes (braking it in the process), and - worst of all - bent my steel derailleur hanger far into my cassette? That is, even if I did, which I didn't, have a spare derailleur, the bent hanger wouldn't support it correctly.
Soooo...f**k. I wasn't hurt from the accident but my bike was in no condition at all to continue on. What to do? I had to scrap the derailleur mechanism completely. For those of you not up to speed, no rear derailleur means no switching gears. And on the West side of an island made-up exclusively of hills and mountains, this (to say the least) presented a problem. I had three options: hitch a ride. No thank you. Remove the chain and push my way across the jungle. Maybe, but not ideal. Or, what I ended up doing, to sensibly bring out my chain breaker, break the chain to a certain length, reattach it as one speed, and pray that riding single speed for three days fully loaded wouldn't kill my knees or over injure my muscles.
That's what had to be done. Three days, one speed, and lots of cursing in Spanish into a jungle that didn't understand me.
One the bright side, I'm not going to say I didn't get stronger from the grueling experience, I did. No gears forced my legs to work persistently, even up bunny hills. Strength came at the price, however, of sore quads and calfs, muscle spasms, riding cramps, and a very noticeable inability to walk correctly for a week.
Since then I've bought a new derailleur in Bengkulu and am happy again. And even though I'm back on twenty four speeds, I've been cycling as if I still only have one. Single speed with the option for twenty three.
Love,
-A
No comments:
Post a Comment