The last few days

After leaving Big Fork MT, I started making my way North towards Columbia Falls, Whitefish and *gasp* Canada. Turns out I didn't do such great of a job of bandaging the tire as the tape gave after about 20 miles. I could feel something was wrong as once again I felt the tire was hitting the frame; but foolishly I kept on riding. I was forced to stop when I heard a pop about as loud as a gunshot when I instantly knew...I had just blown out my inner tube. Changed the tube and once again taped the tire and got going in about 30 minutes.

I set out the next day with only 20 more miles to whitefish, where I could finally find a bike shop and get a replacement tire which I sorely needed. However I would be beleaguered by yet another breakdown only 10 miles from whitefish. In the morning, the tape was coming undone again, but I fixed that really quickly, not wanting a repeat of the previous day's incident. However, while changing gears in preparation from the upcoming hill everything went wrong. The gears refused to change and I heard a lot metallic noise of something hitting the spokes on the back wheel. I stopped immediately only to see that my gear shifter, or derailleur if you will, was stuck in the spokes contorted out of position. When I went to remove it from the spokes it snapped off. Without this part, the bike is as good as worthless, from a riding standpoint anyways.

Despite this precarious situation, my luck wasn't all that bad. I was on somewhat of a busy road only 10 miles away from repairs, which considering the places where I've been, is a pretty fortunate spot to breakdown in. In addition, a passerby stopped in his pickup to see what was going on. Julien asked him if he could give us a ride to whitefish, he instead said "well whats wrong with your bike?" so we showed him the broken shifter and he said "broke your derailleur eh? what is that a shinamo XT derailleur? let me run home and see if I've got a spare one". He turned around and showed up 5 minutes later with a derailleur and some tools. He sold me the derailleur for 25 bucks and straightened out part of the bike frame. I managed to mount the shifter succesfully (something with which I was pleasently suprised) but couldn't attach the cable succesfully, and I had knocked a brake pad loose in the process and had no clue of how to put it back in. We caught our second break of the day when another car stopped and said "you guys need help? I passed you half an hour ago and you're still in the same spot". So we asked him for a ride to whitefish...which he gave us.

At the bike shop the guy properly put in the derailleur and fixed the brakes, and yes, I got a new tire too. However he showed me that the bike had 2 other problems: the chain was crooked and the gears were worn down. He said he could fix everything but that would be a bit pricy and take some more time. Then he said, "but since you guys aren't doing too much more distance...you'll probably be fine, the gears aren't going to shift well and you can't strain the chain too much, so if you have a steep uphill, you'll have to push the bike". We left whitefish around 4 pm and covered pretty good distance, a lot of which was uphill, but then our progress was stalled when we hit the last part of Red Meadow pass. The grade steepened and the chain would just slide right over the worn down gears whenever I pushed hard. So I had to push the bike for the last 1.5 mile of uphill. Fortunately it was a dirt road so no one besides my brother had to see me take the walk of shame.

Made it over Red Meadow pass and back down into the next valley by nightfall when the sky just opened up and rain started falling. It fell all night and we packed up extremely wet tents in the morning, the temperature hovering around 50 degrees did little too help either. That morning we climbed the whitefish divide, the last pass on the trip. The climb itself, though in the pouring rain wasn't bad. It wasn't too steep so I didn't have any gear problems and it was only 10 miles. The real hardships came during the descent. Contrary to what we had hoped, the rain didn't stop once we got to the other side of the mountain, it intensified. Furthermore, we had a 14 mile descent ahead of us. We both reached the end of it in a state of hypethermic shock, but by the end it had stopped raining and we were able to warm up a bit by pedalling to the next town where we got a motel and called it quits for the day.

After warming up and getting a good night's sleep, we set out for the border, now only 8 miles away. Went across, took some pics, got some postcards, and went back. I didn't have too many problems with my lack of a greencard, just a good stern talking to by the U.S. immigration officer. It was probably the most exiting thing happening all day. After the Border we pedalled back towards kalispell by the main road which was a little less than 80 miles away. On the way back we averaged a speedy 13 mph average.

Camped out near Kalispell, went to a UPS store in the morning to ship the bikes back. Went to the airport and after a connection, delays and a car ride, finally made it back to Basking Ridge NJ. How sweet it is.

I'll have another entry in the next few days reviewing the trip, but this is it for now. Time to go unpack, clean out the tent and finally spend a day without getting up, getting on the bike and pedalling...its been a while.