I awoke after a frosty nights sleep to a beautiful sunrise over the desert. It would be forty miles to Santa Rosalia and the Sea of Cortez and maybe a bit more to find decent camping on the beach - no problem. I envisioned a quick ride with plenty of time to set up camp on a sandy beach; also possibly a swim to rinse off the sweat and dirt covering my body. Before loading up, I decided I´d flip my bike over and lube the chain. While spinning the rear tire around, I heard a funny climking noise with every rotation of the wheel. Upon taking off the tire, I noticed also one of the spokes no longer attached to the rim. Uh oh. I pulled the rim tape off and found the culprit - a broken nipple making the sound, along with another nipple, free and unused, that must have accidentally been left in the crawl space (between the place where the tube goes and the underside of the rim) during the making of the wheel. I used this new nipple to fasten the loose spoke back to the rim and marked it with some tape. While pumping the tire back up with Laurel´s pump, I somehow broke the valve stem on the tube. I had pumped it up most of the way though, so I finished setting up the tire, put it back on the bike, loaded up, and we set off.
I was now in a very precarious position. As I think I mentioned previously, about a week before in the desert my rear tube had mysteriously blown up. I had replaced with the only spare tube I had for my rear, which requires a long stem valve since the rim is a bit longer. This replacement had gotten a tiny puncture in it from the spine of a cactus the that night, and during the patching of that the next day, I had managed to brake my tire tool that aids me in getting on and off the tire, as well as my only pump. So now, I had just broken off the only way to pump up my last remaining long-stem tube. I had no tire wrench, nor even a bike pump, and I was unsure of my mechanic work fixing the spoke as it was my first time doing so. I felt as if the whole wheel might collapse at any moment. I felt like I was teetering on a sharp mountain ridge. On one side was joy, on the other pain. If one thing were to happen to that back tire, it could ruin my day, and possbily the next couple days depending on how long it might take me to figure out the situation. I rode on - into a fierce headwind and a slow, gradual rise in elevation. Ten miles into it, my chain wasn´t hitting the cassette right and was skipping as I´d make strong pushes down on the pedals, trying to push my way up the steeper hills. I pulled over to adjust and kept moving. Not a couple miles later on the next hill, the same thing. Knowing that eventually I was going to be climbing quite a bit to get the coast, I pulled over, unloaded my bike, turned it over, and made the serious adjustment needed for my derailur to work correctly.
Already the morning was turning into noon. The strong headwinds had made what should have been an easy climb into a fierce battle with the street. We were only traveling at about 5-7 miles per hour, compared with our normal 13 or so average. We were working twice as hard to go half the distance. Trucks would fly by at either side and we would get pushed around in their air wake, like moths and butterflies in the wind. At that moment on the side of the road, I was tired and frustrated. I felt like leaving my bike right where it was after a couple of swift kicks and sticking out my thumb to get me to the closest beach. I wondered why this was all happening to me. What had I done? I´d been leaving my campsites cleaner then they were when we arrived. I´d been sharing my food, my water, my tent. To my knowledge I hadn´t been mistreating anyone. So why me? Laurel asked if I thought the chain problem could have been related to the wheel problem. The answer, mechanically, was no. And yet I suddenly realized that they were absolutely connected. I had gotten it wrong so far. It was all happening to me exactly because I asked for it - by going on this trip; by putting myself out here trying to cross continents on a bike under all the elements. How could I do this, do anything, live life, and expect things to always go the right way, then flip my lid when they didn´t or don´t? I can´t expect that - the world owes me nothing - this is a test and exactly what I asked for. How am I going to react, how will I resolve these issues?
Before leaving on this trip, I had consulted a good friend who had taken a similar trip on bike down the middle of Mexico to Guatemala the previous year. On the mental experience, she said that I would see whether of not the things that I thought about myself were true. Putting yourself on the line, you see if you can walk the walk. As for me, I have realized that I can´t keep on living the illusion that things are supposed to go my way. I feel sorry for the people that have been close to me and suffered the wrath I have taken out on them when something went wrong. That´s no way to live. It makes people tip toe around you - that is if they still want to be around you. But who knows, they may grow tired of that leave you alltogether eventually. I don´t want that. So how am I going to react? What will I do? Its a simple lesson, but one that continues to slip my mind in moments of frustration when nothing seems to be going my way. Will I frown, yell, kick, and give up, OR will I yield, reflect, think, smile, and move on, like water around a rock...
I finally did get to the coast. Santa Rosalia was a nice, small town, full of mechanics and tire shops, clothes stores, restaurants, hotels, markets, and fisheries. The shore was mostly rocky, the water a deep blue. After getting directions to a bike shop, which sold wedding gowns and bike tires (??), it was closed, as it was siesta, and the lady sweeping the front porch that she´d open it back up the next day, or at five. Feeling a bit confused, I asked for another shop. There happened to be one on the way out of town right off the main highway. Although he had no innertubes my size with the long stems, he gave me a few little pieces that turn a presta valve into a shrader valve (which most tires in the world have). These little pieces, when attached to the valve stems of my spare tires, will give them the extra bit of length needed so that when I replace my rear innertube, I will be able to pump them up. Now, seemingly off the of the precarious ridge I had been riding on, I am a bit more confident and able to relax. Although I still have no pump, I will be able to use Laurel´s until I pick up a new one, and now I have plenty of spare tubes to go around. We just got to Mulege, thirty miles south of Santa Rosalia, and headed a bit further south, to camp somewhere along the coast of the Bahia de Concepcion. It is supposed to be warmer, with sandier beaches, and plenty of palm trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment