A wheel done job

Today was a planned rest day in Urbandale. We took advantage of the fact that we were staying less than 5 miles from a co-motion dealer bike shop to get our wheel issues finally resolved. We broke a spoke the day after we had it rebuilt on the Katy trail, and lost another a couple of days later.

Although it was Saturday morning, we ran into quite a bit of traffic in the bike lane.

Despite the traffic jam, we made it to the bike shop.

We were met at the door to the shop by Tom, a mechanic at the shop. Tom helped us bring the bike into the shop and asked what we needed done. It was immediately obvious that he was a good mechanic and familiar with tandems. I suspect every bike shop in Iowa is busy getting bikes ready for RAGBRAI, which is only a month away, but Tom got right to work on our bike when we told him we planned to be back on the road tomorrow.

Tom replaced 3 spokes and trued the wheel. While we were there we had a couple of other things tuned up. Riding back from the shop the bike felt great, but that might have been because it always feels nice to ride without our baggage.

We spent the afternoon at the living history farm, which has recreations of 3 Iowa farms from 1700, 1850 and 1900. I don't think I would look twice if I passed the 1900 farm house on a country road. In fact, we probably have passed quite a few of that vintage.

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