Day 57: Espanola to Manitowaning (Tension and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance)

We woke up this morning to another beautiful day. Except for the soaking wet tents from the nights dew. With no hope of aim at the site until at least 10am we packed them up wet and after a quick breakfast were on the road.

Everything was going great, cruising along the rolling terrain towards the lake and Manitoulin Island, but after our first rest stop, I got back on my bike and only managed a few meters before I noticed a strange rubbing sound. A quick look back showed that my brakes were hitting my rear wheel, no big problem. On second glance, I noticed that the brakes were rubbing because the wheel was suddenly very warped - big problem, very big problem!

Now, I've done a decent amount of cycling before this trip, but it was almost exclusively short rides of less than 10km, and I'd never had the chance/reason to learn much about how to maintain/fix bikes before. It was only 3 years ago in Van that I got my first new bike, the first bike to fit me properly and be worth caring about. That's not to say I didn't like Mums yard-sale-specials, they did the job, but I never felt much attachment to them (or biking) before I got my nice new bike.

I digress, but I should add that I only learned to clean my chain after commuting for a year around Van through sun and (lots of) rain. Before I started this trip I'd picked up moderate skill at the finicky art of brake alignment/adjustment, but that was all. It took me 10min to figure out how to get the air out of my new Presta valve tires when preparing to put my bike on the plane. In Manitoba I had my first experience with patching tubes and removing tires, so I was getting better and felling like i was learning, but I knew there was still a long way to go and some (many) things were beyond my knowledge.

Like fixing a broken spoke, which is what I quickly realized I had. Luckily I managed to catch the rest of the group before they got out of range, and so at least I had some other expertise to draw on. Mum and Papa had done some decent biking back in the day and had picked up enough knowledge about bike repairs to be dangerous (enough to know how to start and what you are supposed to do, but not always enough to do it fully/correctly). Getting the broken spoke out was easy enough, and thankfully we had a spoke wrench, but "trueing" a wheel is about the ultimate level of bike art - only a slight step below achieving nirvana. Each little spoke has to have just the right amount of tension. When Papa had left on the trip he'd talked to the local bike mechanic about what tools and spares to bring, but when it came to spokes he'd been advised that the best thing to do in case of a broken spoke is hitch-hike, it's not something you should touch yourself because it's
More likely that any adjustment you make will just make it worse and you'll break more spokes.

However, we soon realized that the nearest bike shop was at least 200km (including a ferry ride) and so that didn't seem like a good/possible option. So we did the ill-advised and tried to true the wheel. With me looking and telling Papa what to adjust by how much, we together managed to get the wheel pretty straight (minus a spoke) after about 30min. Then Leah reminded us she had extra spokes for their bikes that we could try, and low and behold it fit! Luckily it was not on the freewheel side (otherwise you have to take the back gears off - which we didn't have the tools for) sober got it in and spent another 30min retrueing it back to normal. But it worked, and after another 30min of putting the brakes back in place and sorting out all the other odds and ends, I had a bike that seemed like it would work again. Or so we hoped...

Wheels and spokes are more likely to break when there is more weight on them, so I was ordered to give away whatever gear others could carry. So much for loading me up to slow me down. But it worked, after 2km nothing had broken, and we declared victory over broken spokes and it looked like my bike would be able to (slowly, carefully) make it to the next bike shop where they could turn our acceptable art into the masterpiece of true that a wheel needs to be in order to ride long and hard like we are.

After all that, the rest of the day flew by, with me trying hard to slow down to reduce the strain on the wheel and also stay with the group. By lunch we'd left the hills of the mainland and crossed over to Manitoulin Island - a whole different landscape. Large limestone lowlands with scrub and grass, with a few large plateaus. It's still very quite, remote and wild, but totally feels coastal. The few towns were nice, very touristy but well done, and we enjoyed another long lunch followed by a nap/swim. What a life!



However, the wind picked up and started really blowing in our faces, and so we were quite ready to call it quits by the time we reached the one campground in the middle of the island. and thankfully it was a gorgeous place, right on Lake Manitoulin (yep there's a lake on an island in a lake - they're all huge, Manitoulin is the largest freshwater island in the world). So we took the required swim and went off to make supper, but within seconds we were so swarmed with mosquitos that we had to retreat to the baseball diamond to cook and eat (where there were none, the bugs hide out like guerilla warriors in the trees and then swarm when the sun goes down). A small price to pay for a pleasant meal.



All in all, another beautiful day. For the sake of my wheel, let's hope the next few bring just the right amount of tension - not too much, but not too little. Helps keep the trip interesting ;)



Distance: 86.82 km
Time on bikes: 4:56:41
Average speed: 17.5 km/h
Distance from Vancouver: 4631 km
Start: 8:45 am
End: 6:15 pm
Wind: South-west (medium-head)
Conditions: sunny


Cheers
- The Warpotay Team

Location:Manitouwaning, ON