I was very worried all day, and the reason was my pannier rack.  A few days ago one of the downward tubes cracked and then broke.  At first I was pretty confident in the makeshift repair I did with zip-ties and duct tape, but things have deteriorated rapidly.  Last night I noticed that the right side of the rack had sagged noticeably and I had serious doubts that I could make it to the nearest bike shop without the whole thing collapsing onto my rear tire.  The closest bike shop was 45 miles away in Quincy, and I thought about riding there without my gear, buying a new rack, and then riding all the way back to Pittsfield.

Of course, that option sucked.  It would be better, I thought, to load everything onto the compromised rack and when it failed I would stash all my gear in the nearest hiding place.  Then I could ride from that point to Quincy and back.  That way, each mile I traveled would be a bonus because it would mean two miles saved on my round trip to the bike shop and back.

All of my thoughts today were on getting as far as possible before the inevitable catastrophe.  My load had shifted further to the right, and whenever I'd take a hand off the handle bars the bike would start wobbling.  I barely looked from side to side as I rode, and I sure didn't take any pictures.

The miles passed and, I'll be damned, I made it all the way to the Madison-Davis Bike Shop in Quincy.  It was a big store with good service and a friendly staff and they had some decent pannier racks in stock.  

I changed out the racks in front of the store and when I got everything put together and re-loaded, my sigh of relief could be heard all the way to Hannibal.  I mention Hannibal because it was a town I would have liked to visit because of it being the boyhood home of one of my literary heroes, Mark Twain.  Unfortunately, it came down to Mark Twain or a new rack and my pragmatic side won out.  

My disappointment was eased a little bit by the fact that I have been to Hannibal before and, even as a 13-year-old, I was not impressed.  I guess I remember being turned off by how the town had cashed in on Twain's fame.  I remember things like The Becky Thatcher Diner, Huck Finn Inn, Tom Sawyer Laundromat, Injun Joe's Pest Control, Mark Twain's Fried Chicken, Life on the Mississippi Plumbers, A Connecticut Yankee's House of Plus-Sized Clothing, The Celebrated Jumping Frog Booze Emporium, etc.  You get the idea.  Those aren't the actual business names but it was almost that bad.

I can't say I liked much about the city of Quincy other than its bike shop.  I wasn't disgusted by it either.  I just didn't find anything edgy about it, and the historic part looked a little TOO historic--that is--decrepit.