July 28, 2023
Brennbichl -> Soelden
The Grizl becomes a 1x
I woke up this morning to the sweet sound of silence. As I mentioned previously, you cant hear shit through these 2 foot thick stone walls. I made my way downstairs to find a large bag of fresh bread from a local bakery. 2 Broetchen with jam and butter were included with the 28 Euros I had paid last night for the hostel bed. I ate, packed up, and hit the road around 9:00. The weather was nice and sunny today. I made it about an hour down the road, and decided I needed to stop for second breakfast, and to get more cash from a Geldautomat. The hostel last night only took cash, so I was running low. For second breakfast I got a bag of Peach gummies. I ate them by the town fountain, only to see someone had left a keg and two bottles of beer (full I assume) in the fountain. Only in Austria. I finished my candy and hopped back on my bike, pedaling east towards the Otztal. I was climbing a hill when I felt my chain drop. I was puzzled. I hadn't shifted, it seemed like a weird time to drop a chain. Upon closer inspection, I saw that my small chainring had imploded. The aluminum ring had sheared and a quarter of the circle had collapsed in under the pressure of the chain.
This was a major problem. I started at the sheared aluminum chainring. There was no quick roadside fix I could use to salvage this. For now, I still had my large 46T chainring, but that would only work for flat ground. If I wanted to do any climbs, I would need that small 30T chainring fixed. I put my chain onto my large chainring, and pedaled to the nearest bike shop: xDreamlite. Thankfully it was a Friday morning, so bike shops were open.
Side note about riding a Canyon Bike: Canyon is a bike company that sells direct from manufacturer to consumer. This allows them to sell at lower prices (about 30-40% less than other bike brands), but fundamentally undermines the buisness model of local bike shops, who use that 40% industry markup to run their buisness. That being said, getting a bike shop mechanic to work on your canyon bike can be a real pain in the ass. There is nothing fundamentally difficult about working on a canyon bike. There is only one canyon-specific part on the entire bike: the deraileur hanger. I planned ahead and packed an extra one with me just in case it got bent at some point. However, because Canyon undermines local bike shops, lots of local bike shops will simply tell you: "you want to buy a bike from Canyon, go deal with them to get your bike fixed 🖕"
I had encountered this attitude at many bike shops in Koblenz (which happens to be Canyon's world headquarters) when I bent my chainring earlier on this trip. Thankfully, xDreamlite was not one of these bike shops. They had no issue helping me with my problem. The mechanic looked at my bike, took some measurements of my crank with a caliper, and started rummaging around in the back for parts: "give me 15 minutes, I think I might have something for you", he told me in English.
He laid out a few different cranks on his work bench: "I don't have any 2x cranks that will fit your bike unfortunatly. What I do have are 2 different 1x mountain bike cranks that will fit. You can have either a 32T or 34T one, depending on what kind of gearing you want". Turning my bike into a 1x was not an ideal solution: I do not have an oversized rear cassette to give the bike the gearing range a normal 1x bike would have. However, I didn't really have any better options. I told him I wanted the 32T chainring. I need those climbing gears. Flat ground be damned.
He said ok and installed it for me. He noted that the chainring I had must have been poorly made for it to fail like that. I took the bike for a spin around the shop parking lot, and it shifted better than it had before. I could reach about 30km/h before getting spun out, which was good enough for most of what I'm doing. Since I was here, I also asked him to install one other thing: a kickstand. I know it's not very "aeor" or "ultralight", but finding a place to lean a loaded bike can be a real pain in the ass. Having a kickstand is absolutly worth the weight and can help prevent damage to your bike from falls.
I paid 80 Euros, and thanked him dearly for working on my bike on such short notice. "Sie haben meine reise gerettet!" I told him. However, by this point, it was way too late to make it to Timmelsjoch: the pass I had planned to climb today. Instead, I decided to stay closer, in Soelden. This gave me time to explore a nearby attraction: Area 47. This is "Austria's biggest outdoor adventure park", and features a cable wake boarding park, similar to what I had done in Estavayer Le Lac. When I got there around 2:15pm, they said they were booked out until 4:00pm. I asked if they had any wakeboarding slots from 4:00pm-6:00pm, and they said yes. This meant I would need to take a bus to Soelden to make it there before dark, but I was ok with that. I considered today a cycling wash anyway. I dried out my tent and clothes while I waited. When 4:00pm rolled around, I got my gear: helmet, life jacket, and wakeboard, and headed to the take-off zone. I had done this before, so I wasn't too concerned.
However, when I tried to take off, I realized this cable was moving faster than the last one I had tried: 30km/h vs 28km/h. That small speed difference made it noticebly harder to get started. It felt like my arms were getting ripped out of my shoulder sockets, and I ended up face planting into the water many times. I had to switch to the kneeboard, and after I made a lap on that, went back to the wakeboard. I eventually made 4 consecutive laps around the pond at the end of my 2 hour ticket. Success.
I packed up my now dry clothes and tent and headed to the bus statio
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1 year ago
n to Soelden. I apparently loaded my bike into the wrong rack, and the pissed off bus driver had to get out and put my bike in the correct rack (there are different sized racks for kids/adult sized bikes). Woops. When I got to Soelden, I wasn't expecting much from my 60 Euro/night hotel room, but it was actually quite a fancy place.
Today's ride: 14 miles (23 km)
Total: 1,700 miles (2,736 km)
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