On that dark and stormy morning in June, Wes and I left for our trip. Besides all of our gear, I was carrying my usual load of worry. I figured we knew enough to handle bad weather, poor health, and a myriad of other things that could go wrong except, mechanical problems. I am mechanically impaired. My worries centered around one of our bikes breaking and our trip would come to an abrupt end.
I suspected that the wheel was coming off the proverbial wagon early on. For some reason, I broke a non-drive side spoke on my rear wheel. Wes, fortunately more mechanically savvy than I, was able to replace it with relative ease. Two days later, another spoke on my rear wheel broke, same side. Again, Wes fixed it. Our supply of spare spokes was dwindling.
Fortunately for us, we were coming up to Dunnville, Ontario. The Adventure Cycling maps indicated that there was a bike shop in town. We stopped at a local bakery for coffee and scones and to see if we could locate where the bike shop was. Lady luck was kind to us that day, the shop was across the street.
The shop supplied us with more spokes and a quick truing of my wheel. The owner charged us a small fee …. part of which included amusing the whole store with our tale of each of us eating alone in our tents during a horrendous storm the night before.
Relying on the cycling truism, that if you carry extra tubes, no flats will happen. Carry rain gear and it won’t rain. Extra spokes would surely prevent more spokes breaking.
To be continued….
Brian
