Roughest day.

It all started having to wake up early so that I wouldn’t be spotted. All seemed to be going well until I realized that I had missed a turn I was supposed to take and went just over 3 miles up hill in the wrong direction. After backtracking back down and getting off course once again (this time I was only on a parallel road so it wasn’t so bad) I decided to take a nap.

I woke up an hour and a half later and continued on, it was either 11 or 12 at that point. The rest of the day was just frustrating. Whichever county I was in had THE worst marked secondary roads I’ve been on. Once I got out of that county, the road I was paralleled RT17, which resembles an interstate. This road then lead into one of the most boring and depressing sparsely populated somewhat industrialized region. All this with the added bonus of a headwind since lunch.

Noticing how close I was to NJ I decided to call my friend Matt S. To see if how close I was to him. Turns out he lives about an hour away but he’ll come get me anyhow. Thing were looking up. I was just 9 miles from where I was going to meet him and had a few hour to get there.

Then it happened. I was climbing a hill, my chain came off the sprocket while shifting, and my rear derailer got caught in my rear wheel. I was so mad!

There was a lady outside near me at the time, and she helped me call a taxi. It cost $15 to get to the bike store, which happened to be in the same town where I was going to meet Matt. At this point I was guessing that the repairs would cost around $100, so I was pretty bummed. This was about the low of the day.

I walked into the shop and explained my situation and what happened. He took the bike he was working on off the stand and fixed me up. Turns out I bent the dropout where the rear derailer attaches to the bike, instead of smashing the derailer as I had assumed, I was too frustrated to look at it. He bent it back into place and tuned the bike back up. He noticed the chain was a bit long, which they had said at Cycle Loft as well but they said it would ride fine, so he shortened that 3 links for. Total cost: $10 flat!

I was siked! I then asked him of any good places to waste some time and he recommended High Point State Point. It was about 7 miles away, 4 of which were all up hill, and I mean ALL up hill, but it was worth it! There is a nice lake here that I cooled off in and a monument I’m about to go visit. Matt should be here in about 30 minutes so I’m going to get going.

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