June 14, 2016
The phantom menace
As we left Conway this morning, we encountered a lot of traffic including a large number of heavy trucks. It was not easy to hear any unwanted bike noises over the traffic noise. In general, all noises from the bike are unwanted. After leaving our first stop of the day at a gas station where Kerry treated himself to the first diet Coke of the day, Alain was surprised when both Viktoriya and Kerry started telling him to change gears. "The bike is making noise. You are between gears. Fix it". Even though Alain couldn't hear anything above the traffic noise and the gears felt fine, he tried a few different gears using both the front and rear derailleurs.
"Did that fix it?"
"No! Are you deaf? It's still making noise".
We concluded that the noise was coming from the back of the bike. If it wasn't the gears, what could it be? Perhaps a broken spoke? Could there be some debris trapped between the tire and the fender? We pulled off the road into a church parking lot away from the traffic noise. We checked the spokes but none were broken. Riding around the back of the church Alain could not hear the noise, so we continued on our way.
The noise came back. Kerry is the mechanic in our group. He narrowed it down to either the rear hub or a jockey pulley on the rear derailleur. The noise seemed to continue even when we were not pedaling, so that seemed to eliminate the jockey pulleys. We decided we didn't have the tools with us to properly diagnose the problem, let alone fix it, so we just continued pedaling.
Fortunately as we pulled into our next rest stop process engineer Viktoriya solved the problem. "There's a great big blob of chewing gum stuck to the rear tire. You must have run over it at the last rest stop.". After a minute of wiping she was able to silence the phantom menace that was disrupting our peaceful ride.
With the bike back in order we were able to continue on and cross the border into North Carolina.
The first difference we noticed is that NC does not carve rumble strips into the shoulders of the roads. That makes it a lot easier and safer to deal with traffic.
Because we had a short mileage day scheduled, we made a side trip to Ocean Isle Beach.
Kerry was able to locate a house he had helped remodel decades ago, but no one was home to chat with.
The bridge across the intracoastal waterway to Ocean Isle Beach was exciting to cross. The bridge wall is only about 2 feet high, well below the center of gravity of the tandem captains, both of whom had similar thoughts about what would happen if they had to swerve to the side to avoid traffic.
We arrived in Shallotte in time for lunch.
Jeanna had been telling us about Brunswick Stew for days and we finally had some chance to sample some at a BBQ place.
Both Jeanna and Kerry assured us that it was correct to serve the coleslaw on the pulled pork sandwich and that we were enjoying authentic Carolina BBQ. Given that they eat pork and sauerkraut, black eyed peas and turnip greens every New Years day we figure they qualify as experts on everything from Pennsylvania Dutch to Southern cuisine.
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