My legs were a bit tired when I woke up at 6am so I decided to go back to sleep. They weren’t much better at 9 but after a bowl of tuna pasta I was off anyway.
I knew today’s ride wasn’t going to be that exciting and it even had 25km along route 1, which was pretty horrible.
Once off route 1 and about 50km in, it was time for a picnic and after 5km of looking for the right place I settled on a distinctly average spot knowing full well there’d be something better 5mins further down the road.
It wasn’t quite 5 mins but down the road and up a massive hill, low and behold there was a beautiful picnic spot that would have been just the ticket.
On the way up this hill I had thrown the bike into my lowest gear and gotten out of my saddle to do some pretty aggressive climbing. My bike had responded with some strange noises so at the top of the hill I gave it the once over.
Another spoke! I was down to 30 now and I was pretty confident that the rate of deterioration was less of a straight line and more of a parabola. I decided to proceed with caution. Slow downhill and never out of the saddle up hill… it sucked but I only had 30km to go so I decided to push on.
On the flats I assumed the even distribution meant I could at least pedal at a reasonable speed but the rear tyre at this stage was wobbling so much that I couldn’t adjust it/the breaks to make it not rub against the break pads. At least, not without removing the break entirely. I decided this was not wise and just as I was thinking about how else I could solve this issue, “donk”, a now familiar sound followed by some less familiar ones.
I pulled over, took out the offending spoke and turned the wheel. It wouldn’t budge. There was no chance I could get it 10m let alone the 30 odd I had left.
Within 2 minutes though a man in a van offered me a ride. Where was he going? South Auckland (where the bike shop was). What a good bloke this guy was. Apparently someone had helped him change a tyre on his van the other day so he wanted to repay the favour. I didn’t even flag him down or stick out my thumb, he just saw that I was in a pinch. Anyway he took me straight to the bike shop, I got a “new” wheel and a full service and I’m now ahead of schedule.
Bish 1, Bike 1
Bish on a Bike 