The Day My Bike Broke

Day 26: Van Damme State Beach to Stillwater Cove

Today's Distance: 69 miles

Total Distance: 1,232 miles

The plan was to ride with Stu today, and he's one of those early morning guys so that meant packing up camp by 6 and on the road by 7.  Well, I did it...I woke up at 6...too bad I only made it to the bathroom and back before I decided that it was too early and way too cold to start riding my bike today.  I told Stu that I think he's crazy and I'll do my best to catch up, but I'm going back to bed for a little bit.  By the time I got up and on the road, the weather was beautiful.  The Seattle girls are taking it a little easier and I have to have a couple of bigger days to make it to SF on Sunday, so I said my goodbyes.  I'd be spending the whole day on the Highway 1 and its mostly  narrow and winding, full of short, steep hills.  Gorgeous, but challenging...story of the trip so far. 

Somewhere in the first 15 miles I was aggressively climbing a steep hill and the arm on my rear rack came undone and dug into the cassette.  It made a terrible sound as I grinded to a stop.  My heart stopped.  I was pretty positive that my trip was now over. Bike broken and about 100 miles between me and a bike shop.  Not even halfway up the hill, I jumped off my bike to inspect the damage. Surprisingly, the cassette didn't look like it was damaged at all.  I only glanced at the rack but it initially looked like I somehow only snapped a screw...I was wrong, but I Macgyver'd it and got going again.  I was frustrated, but I was distracted by a Blue Jay that decided to climb up the rest of the hill with me.  It would fly from post to post and then wait for me to catch up and then move on ahead and then wait and so on.  Definitely made a difficult moment more enjoyable.  I carefully finished the rest of the first 15 miles and stopped for lunch in Elk. 

I had one of the best lunches I've had on this trip at Queenie's Roadhouse Cafe; I recommend the chicken & dumplings.  When I got going again, the weather changed from really nice, to foggy and breezy.  Shortly after leaving Elk, I hit easily the steepest hill on the pacific coast so far...maybe even the steepest hill of this entire trip.  At this point, my tire was rubbing against the rack and I was overly careful to make sure I didn't make matters worse.   Doing this crazy, steep hill with a tire rubbing, made each pedal 100x harder.  Maybe it was a mixture of extreme physical and mental difficulty, but it felt impossible (at least at the time.) I had to get off and push my bike up the top of the hill....which was no easy task by any means.  While off my bike, I took a closer look at my rack and realized it was much worse than I thought.  I completely snapped one of the arms on the rack...you know, just the thing holding literally all of my possessions and making this trip physically possible.

I stopped at a hardware store in one of the small towns I rode through and came up with a very temporary fix.  I won't go into detail cause it won't make sense, but hopefully this will be good enough to get me to the next bike shop.  My book says the next shop is in Bodega Bay (about 26 miles away) so that's my goal. Wish me luck!