Rest day in Rochefort

March 15, 2011

Today was intended to be a rest day. I was going to explore the local caves, in Rochefort as well as in the more famous ones in Han-Sur-Lesse. I explored Rochefort a little more. In Rochefort was a quite obscure cave, which was only open by special appointment. I dropped into the tourist office and they said they'd open it up for me. So I got a private tour of this cave, including a cool balloon demonstration.

"If you would take my place, would you please also take my handicap". There's a very black comic Belgian film called "Aaltra", which this reminded me of.

Memorial to the battle of the bulge, which was fought all the way through this part of the Ardennes. The US troops became stuck out on a salient, and eventually cut off from the rest of the army - but managed to hold out until they were relieved. When the general was asked if he wanted to surrender, he replied with the single word: "Nuts". He now goes does in posterity as General Anthony "Nuts" McAuliffe

Part of the ruins behind the tower in Rochefort

My private balloon demonstration. This was meant to demonstrate a physical principal - sadly I can't remember what. Some natural scientist I was.

After this I rode the 10km or so into Han. The caves here are bigger, but rather famous and commercial. You have to take a dinky train to get to the caves.

As I rode contentedly back from Han, I suddenly noticed that my front wheel had gone badly out of true. Now, at this point my knowledge of maintenance was pretty thin. It was only when I got to Rochefort and examined it that it was clear a spoke had broken: just snapped right in the middle. I was subsequently to learn that this was very common with the wheels on the cheap Oxford bikes.

Fortunately, there was a bike shop open in Rochefort in the evening. I dived in, and with a bit of dodgy French ("cette ... chose, c'est cassé!") made myself understood. Unfortunately the shop was super-busy, and I don't think I appreciated how much of a pain retruing the wheel might be - he couldn't fix it for a couple of days. As I despondently wheeled off, wondering whether I could get to a larger town to get it fixed, another assistant spotted me and asked me what was wrong. I went back through my "c'est cassé" routine - and they took pity on me at that point.

Now, I didn't know at the time, but it's clear to me now they fitted an emergency spoke and got the wheel roughly true. They charged me €5 and I went off, well pleased with the results of my persistence - I could ride on now! Of course, I now know that the fix was very much temporary - they likely told me this, but with my mediocre French I probably didn't get it. The wheel - the front - was probably still rather weak, I was riding with some load, at least - and I shudder to think now what would have happened if it had failed when I was, say, descending into Luxembourg city at 43mph.

In the event, the wheel held - and indeed I rode on that emergency spoke for many months afterwards. Ironically, it was this experience that lead me to try to understand something of wheel-building myself, and with the help of Sheldon Brown, eventually completely rebulding the wheel when I rebuilt the set a few months later.

Today's ride: 20 km (12 miles)
Total: 347 km (215 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0