Cycling With A German Couple

August 14, 2000

Waking up to the rumble of rain on the tent took me by surprise. I hoped it would clear and would not be a whole wet day; not wanting to face a day riding in rain and after a long time procrastinating over tea, I begin to organise. First asking the campsite warden about the state of the track onwards. He tells me it is bad. The forecast is for rain everyday until Thursday. The plan to reach Hella today and eventually, I got moving at 11. The rain doesn't seem so bad when out in it; and feeling tired after the last few days, I stop again at 12 for lunch. While eating a German couple cycle pass, stopping briefly to say hello. About an hour later, I catch them up and we would cycle together for the remainder of the day. The way mainly downhill; but, as the campsite warden intimated, the track was bad. And further on it was awful. The Germans who were much lighter laden down got ahead and I struggled to keep up. Though, under leaden sky, ever changing light and dark, raining on and off, the valley the track was descending down through was quite scenic heading toward the resently active volcano Helka, where the landscape is black with volcanic rubble.

On the rough track I hadn't forgotten the two broken spokes and consequently the poor state of my rear wheel. It came as no surprise then when I hear a ping as a third spoke broke. When I catch the German couple up the man gives me spare spokes he had and offered to fix the wheel there and then, but I insist that we don't try as the bike is still rideable, adding that rebuilding a wheel in the middle of the wilderness, something could end up not fitting and then I could be left with an unrideable bike. At the campsite that evening, I replace the broke non-drive side spoke, but do not have a cassette tool to replace the two drive side broken spokes. At least the wheel is looking better than it was.

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