Mile 2120.0 - Repair Day

Lying in my tent in Wolsey City Park, I had a problem. The bike shop I needed to get to was in Brookings, 85 miles away. The rear rack was now completely broken, the supports on both sides deciding to snap instead of taking the pressure. There was no way I was going to make it all the way from Wolsey, it just wasn’t safe. Then, I had an idea. The next town I would come to was Huron, a large town for the area of 12,000 people, complete with a fairgrounds, a minor league baseball field, several hotels and an airport. I pulled out my phone and searched for rental car agencies. There were two. As it was 10pm at that point, there was no reason to call them, but the plan was to rig up the rack as best I could, make it the 16 or so miles into town, then rent a truck, throw Penny in the back, drive to Brookings for the repair, drive back to Huron and then continue from there. I would safely get to Brookings, and though it would cost most of a day, I wouldn't skip any miles.

In the morning I struck camp. With my handy roll of electrician's tape, I wound both sides up tightly, taping the rack both back to itself and the frame. I wasn't happy about what that might do to the paint job, but more important was getting the bike to the shop. I had breakfast at the local restaurant/gas station/casino and slowly started my day. The dining room was a little odd in that there were several copies of the same posters hanging around. I like doge playing poker as well as the enxt guy, but three copies of the same print seems like over-saturation. I left, riding slowly and cautiously and stopping every few miles to make sure my taping job was still supporting the stuff on the rack.

Part of the way there, I had nice a nice 6' wide shoulder, though there were times when it narrowed to two feet with rumble strips lying across the whole shoulder to keep drivers awake when they start to drift off. Finally, I made it into Huron and called the closer of the two rental agencies. They didn't have any trucks, and a car could work, but wasn't preferable. Then I called the place out by the airport and all they had that would fit a bike in the back was a Suburban. Slight overkill, I was hoping for an F-150 or something smaller like that, but I'll take what they had. Though, to be sure, if South Dakota had light passenger rail, say from Sioux Falls up through Brookings and Huron and then out to Pierre and winding up in Rapid City, I would have taken that. And shoot up another line to Aberdeen that then extends up to Bismark and another spur from Sioux Falls to Sioux City. That's one of the things I think about when I ride, how would I set up a transit system in this area.

The airport was about two miles away from where I was, so I started making my way north to it. I was turning onto the road leading to the airport, about a mile away at this point, when finally the rack gave out. It had gone 16 miles, but 17 was too much to ask. I dismounted and walked the rest of the way. The rack had once again fallen onto the back tire, so there was the extra drag from that. One of the braces on the underside of the rack was actually digging into the rubber of the tire and pretty much destroyed it. Thankfully, I was going to a bike shop.

I got the suburban and started towards Brookings. I was in the car not 10 minutes when I started to get bored and antsy. I can ride my bike for 10 hours across undeveloped landscape just fine, but put me in a car for ten minutes and I get bored. I really don't see how people do this every day. I do acknowledge that the truck was able to go faster than I ever could on a bike with just a simple depression of my right foot. Uphill made little difference and the wind was only a slight annoyance more than a foe to be battled. But, in the 160 miles round trip that I drove, the truck used 8.8 gallons of gas. It made me really think about how much gas I wasn't using crossing the country.

Anyway, Brookings. I found the shop, Sioux River Bicycles, easily and pulled Penny in. As I was explaining the problem to one woman, an older man walked up and said, 'oh, you must be the tourist that called a couple days ago'. This was Rob, the owner. Rob, as it turns out, not only had done several long-distance tours in his younger years, he used to ride a Trek 520. We got along instantly. As he was first looking over the bike, he noticed the water bottle cages say Bicycle Habitat on them. 'You really are from New York', he said. 'So do you know Charlie?' Charlie is the owner of Bicycle Habitat, and we had a couple conversations about bikes and touring when I was shopping around for Penny.

It was immediately obvious that this was exactly the shop I needed to be in. I changed out the tires, the chain and, of course, the rack. The front tire on the bike was still the original Bontrager touring tire, though the back tire, as you recall, was replaced with an Armadillo in San Rafael, CA. Armadillos are fine tires, but I prefer the Bontrager, though many shops do not carry them. I mean, I had gotten about 3100 miles of hard use out of the front tire and it was still kicking. Bontrager was all Rob kept in stock. I got the exact tires the bike had started with, and that made me quite happy.

We found a Topeak rack that would serve me the rest of the way to New York, he pulled off my chain and showed me how stretched it had gotten. He pulled the rear gear cog off the rim and cleaned it in a way that I just can't when I'm on the road, lubed up the break lines to get more mileage out of them, and generally checked to make sure that everything on Penny was working the way it was supposed to. The whole repair took about two and a half hours and afterward he took me down to their basement to show me some older bikes he had down there. He has a never used Trek 620 frame that is almost as old as I am that he's slowly building using parts from other bikes. After spending about 15 minutes showing me bikes in the basement, we went back upstairs and spent time looking at websites of other tourists that have come through.

I finally left then drove to the other side of town to get to the Jimmy Johns. Oh yes. I drove back to Huron and found a motel room on the east side of town. The manager, Lynda, I'm pretty sure her name was, and her son were so impressed with what I was doing that she upgraded my room for free and took $10 off price. Woo Hoo! Love the cross-continental discount. I unloaded everything except Penny into the room, returned the truck and then rode the couple miles from the airport back to the motel.

Certainly, this will be my shortest mileage day that 'counts', but it was important to get the work done.

Day 28, Wolsey, SD - Huron SD
19.1 miles in a slow 2:11:10. Now at 2120.0 for the trip in 180:47:41 and today I got up to 20.9 cruising unloaded back across town.