Mount Vernon, WA to Seattle, WA
22.88 miles
2:02.36 hrs
31.8 max
11.2 avg
Today was supposed to be a very long day (95 miles) but turned into a very short day with a little bike trouble. 20 miles into my trip I was climbing a hill and I heard a "pop". I immediately connected the noise with a broken spoke. I looked down at my spokes as I rolled along slowly and did not notice any of them broken. I then contributed the sound to a slip in the gearing; as sometimes I get a "ting" noise when I am changing gears under high tension of the chain. Due to the whobble in my tire from the previous day I decided to stop for lunch and true my wheel.
Once off my bike, with sandwich in hand, I noticed that I actually had 4 broken spokes all on the opposite side of the cassette. To me this meant that the bike shop that I purchased the wheel from did not tighten the spokes properly after receiving the wheel from the manufacturer! I will be taking this up with the bike shop at a later date. Upon realizing that all the bike shops on the island were closed (Sunday!) I immediately proceeded to look up the location of the nearest REI, 40 miles away. Being that I could not safely ride my bike to the store I resorted to old school tactics: I put on my "help me face" and went to the side of the road where I proceeded wave to strangers passing by with my thumb. Now, hitch hiking may be hard enough with only a backpack but imagine the frequency of someone wanting to pick up a hitch hiker with 120 lbs of gear with him! Sue enough, after about 15 min of watching traffic zoom by me and giving me looks of disgust, a nice Reverend picked me up in his minivan and drove me all the way down to Clinton so that I could fetch the ferry over to the mainland. From there I took the bus to the mall where the REI was located. I almost was not allowed on the bus with all my stuff but the bus driver was very understanding of my story and said that I could do it "this one time".
The people at REI fixed my wheel but took about 2 hours to do so. They put a beginner tech on the job and at some point during the process he placed the plastic guard on wrong and it made the cassette catch and spin with the wheel. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with it and they sent me off with an imperfect bike saying that I should bring it down to corporate REI when I got to Seattle and have them look at it. They mentioned that I was covered by REI's insurance policy and therefore if they truly did mess something up in the hub (their current diagnosis was that they tightened the cassette down to hard and ruined the hub) they would give me a replacement wheel for free.
Fortunately, I had a contact in the local area who was willing to come and pick me up and bring me into Seattle from REI. She even treated me to dinner at my favorite restaurant that I have found on my trip thus far. I don't stop at nearly any restaurants while biking but this restaurant is one of my favorite of all times! It is called "........" (I forgot the name but will get it and let you all know later). They make their noodles from scratch, their dumplings from scratch and have amazing green beens!!! Unbelievable food! Thank you Melissa for treating me to that wonderful food and giving me a ride into Seattle! You are a life saver!
