May 29, 2002

distances in km.

May 29, 2002

I’m frazzled! What a day!

The Great Salt Lake

Bike touring is a microcosm of life itself. A microcosm on hyperdrive. If you have a problem in life, and you procrastinate with your attempt at resolving the issue, it will eventually become a bigger problem. If you have a problem on the bike that you don’t attend to immediately, it will bite you back hard and fast – within days or even hours. You cannot afford to put things off that you know you should deal with now because they can become serious problems very quickly. I’ve learned that lesson a thousand times.

Here’s a perfect example of this life metaphor: Remember the shoe that I lost the other day? The Shimano peddles on the trike have a cheap plastic ‘regular’ flat peddle on the reverse side. I was peddling with my running shoes by using the flat side of the pedal. It didn’t take long before both of the plastic cheap-o pedals started to break and my foot became more and more angled as the plastic part became progressively worn.

To resolve the problem, I could have stopped at the bike store in Pocatello, and picked up some new bike shoes with Shimano cleats on them (which I’ll eventually need anyhow). OR, I could procrastinate by attempting to strengthen the plastic part by wrapping wire around the pedal that I picked up off the side of the highway.

So my ingenious solution consisted of random bits of wire wound recklessly around the peddle and a double A battery to make it ‘flatter’. Like so:

So I woke up this morning with a swollen and sore ankle due to two days of cycling on crooked, wonky peddles!

I need to solve this problem now, before the ankle gets worse – so I contacted the Lovelands Bike Store in Brigham City and they had some shoes in stock – my size!

Now – I’ve been accused of being born with horseshoes up my butt – and well, maybe they’re right. My tire went flat again on the sidewalk in FRONT of the bike shop. Since my bike is from Europe, the valves in the unusual tube are the smaller Presta valves. In order to put a replacement North American tube with the thicker Shraeder valve on the wheel, I needed to drill out the holes in the rims. This I did before I left Calgary. The first time my tire went flat, I couldn’t put the new tube in because the valve wouldn’t fit through my incorrectly drilled hole – I guess I forgot to actually test the size of the hole I drilled. So I patched the old, worn out tube, and forgot about it. Again – something that I did not deal with immediately came back to haunt me. But luckily it happened outside a bike store where Lance re-drilled my rims for me and we installed the new tube and I was on the road again with a new tube and brand new shoes and no more sore ankle!

It was a long and mentally frazzling day! I was not allowed to take the interstate, and so I rode a winding (winding in ALL axis’s!!!) alternate route of 97 km through city after city all blended together to make one giant city finally connected to Salt Lake City. It was 95 degrees today also. And much of the route had no shoulder.

But I made it! Downtown Salt Lake City! I think I’ll spend tomorrow here and do some swimming, then head to my FINAL destination – Provo on Friday.