The story of a broken derailleur: And what's that across the river?

June 9, 2014

It was raining once again come morning but Rob and I braved the elements and cycled on together, leaving the other three staring forlornly out of their tents at the grey skies. It proved to be not such a bad decision on our part, for the gloom added an extra dimension to the intimidating peaks that rose all around us, and the scenery found new ways to impress. Our river joined another and grew in size to a fearsome swell of white water that tumbled down beside us on our wet gravel road, until finally we reached the town of Kalaikhum that marked the end of our expedition through the mountains together.

This rather precarious bridge looked somewhat dangerous, and was above a bit of fierce white-water, so fall in and you're dead.

It was strange to be back amongst civilization again, picking up tins of beans on supermarket shelves and fighting through crowds of people to find the market (which in this case turned out to be one man with a few sacks of rather odd looking root vegetables.) Whilst it would be fair to say that in most parts of the world Kalaikhum would be considered a village, to us it felt like a metropolis. There was even rumours of a bike shop, but when I asked around I was only pointed to a closed kiosk with pictures of CDs and hammers above it. I would just have to hope that my two remaining cheap Chinese gear cables would be good enough to last until Khorog. Anyway, my front rim had survived the big wet descent, which was always my biggest concern, so it was clearly going to be easy sailing from now on.

Rob was so impressed by Kalaikhum, or perhaps so worn out from the pass, that he decided to take a rest day in the town. But by this point Gayle, John and their omnipresent Hungarian accompaniment had all arrived and so I still had some company to continue on with. At least until the top of the big hill out of town, at the top of which Gayle declared "We don't want to ride with you anymore!" I decided not to take this too personally as it seemed to be directed mostly at Gabor, although it certainly wasn't the first time they had said it to him so quite why they thought it would work this time was anyone's guess. It seemed to me to be a bit like asking your own shadow to stop following you around.

So I took the 'hint' and cycled on alone and looked across the larger river that I was now following. It was quite interesting to look across to the other side of this river, because on the other side of this river was an interesting thing, and the interesting thing on the other side of this river was...

...wait for it...

AFGHANISTAN!

Dun..dun...durrrrrrrnnn!!!!!

Pretty friggin' cool eh? Afghanistan! Who'd have thunked it?! Afghanistan! Whatever next? I looked across and saw men in robes and women in burkas and very little traffic save for the occasional motorbike or donkey. On both sides of the river huge mountains rose up magnificently towards a now bright blue sky. The weather had improved so much that I soon stopped and washed all my clothes in the river and lay them in the sun to dry. Unfortunately before the sun had a chance to dry them dirty grey clouds drifted in and blocked the poor ball of burning gasses, so I had to ride on with a bunch of clean but wet clothes.

Just around the next corner I was looking across at a herd of Afghan donkeys making their way down the Afghan highway when I heard a rather worrying 'ping' from below me and felt my chain stop moving, bringing me to a grinding halt. One of the jockey wheels of my rear derailleur had broken off and the whole thing was completely disfigured. This was a really bad thing. "Oopsy-daisy!" I said, or something to that effect.

I found the jockey wheel and pulled over to the side of the road to try and put the thing back together again. This proved to be somewhat akin to trying to put an orange back together having already peeled it and separated all the segments, and having made a smoothie out of it, and drunk it. As if the impossible task wasn't frustrating enough an old man who was working at a tiny gas station a little down the road walked over to watch my efforts, which were varied and included quite a bit of bending, stretching, bashing and swearing. Then I lost the screw for the jockey wheel, dropping it somewhere on the gravel. My silver-haired companion did at least help me look for it, by turning over very large rocks and digging up plants (he was covering the 'less-likely' spots.)

"Hmm, I can't see anything wrong" mused the old man

"Well, that bit is supposed to be connected to that other bit, and it should be a lot straighter, and there should be a little wheel in there, and a screw, can you help me find the screw please?"

I was right royally screwed now wasn't I? Can't ride a bike without a rear derailleur can you? Time to get in a truck, right? Not so fast hombre! I was only seven kilometres from Kalaikhum and that kiosk with the CDs and hammers above it was still fresh in my mind, a beacon of hope in a desperate situation. And so I walked, seven kilometres, all the way back. The cries of "Hello! Hello! Hello!" from the small children along the road seemed less pleasant than they had when I'd been able to cycle straight past them. But I walked past them instead, and I kept on walking until I reached my goal. Of course the CD and hammer kiosk was still closed.

I asked around. Promising noises were made. Then a bearded man in a skull cap arrived and unlocked the bolted door, ducking inside and lifting up the shutters of the kiosk for me. Inside was a cornucopia of products including, I believe, both CDs and hammers. The bicycle parts section covered about five inches of one shelf. I showed my broken derailleur to the man, more in hope than expectation. But he nodded and reached his arm behind a cassette and a pair of brake pads. His arm went back and back, seemingly reaching out into another dimension filled with bicycle parts, before returning to this one with one brand spanking new rear derailleur. I cautiously asked how much it was. He knew I needed it, he could pretty much name his price. I decided that I would happily pay anything up to fifty dollars. Actually I'd probably have paid a hundred. There wasn't ~~another~~ a bike shop within a hundred kilometres and I needed this thing really bad. "Twenty somoni" he said. It seemed like a reasonable price. For those of you not up on your Tajik currency conversions twenty somoni is about four dollars, or two pounds and fifty pence. I coughed up.

I didn't really expect it to work, it was just a cheap piece of Chinese-made crap, but I had to try didn't I? I found a good spot and fitted it and to my absolute astonishment it didn't just work, it worked perfectly. It was a miracle, an absolute miracle. I was back in business. Of course I still had to try and cycle more than two thousand kilometres of remote roads relying on a piece of metal and plastic that cost four bucks, but my bike could move again and that was all that mattered at that moment. I had to hand it to my old derailleur, if it had to break on the remote Pamir highway it couldn't have picked a much better spot than seven kilometres from a shop selling a replacement. Well, it could have been seven kilometres better, would have saved me a couple hours walking, but lets not worry about that. I certainly didn't as I cycled onwards with a big smile on my face, greeting the young children's cries of "Hello! Hello!" with an emphatic "Hello!" back. The enthusiasm from both sides was impressive, particularly as it was the third time we'd done it that day. I was very pleased, the evening turned out to be an extremely pleasant one and I ended it camping beside the river a stones throw from Afghanistan. I was alone once more, but I was still going, and I was happy.

Glorious to see you all, you fine young children you

Today's ride: 46 km (29 miles)
Total: 20,423 km (12,683 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	4
Comment on this entry	Comment	0