Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006

To:         touring@phred.org

From: “Michael Ayers” <michael@terminalia.org>

Subject: Gondwana - The Story of Steel (and other maloccurrences)

Hi Phreds,

Those who bothered to read some of my posts over the last several months may recall me mentioning a mysterious mechanical issue with the bike on more than one occasion. Now that my wheels are firmly on African soil, it seems like a good time to reveal the whole sorted affair. Here goes:

Episode 1:

The story starts in Thailand, in the town of Ayutthaya to be exact. Here’s the deal with Thailand. Usually it’s fairly easy to navigate through the cities and towns there, but one stupendously bad piece of roadway design causes all sorts of problems. Specifically, many of the larger roads in congested areas have a high divider or fence between the opposing lanes, whose purpose is to prevent users from making a right-hand turn (it’s a travel-on-the-left country, you know) when entering the road. So in order to turn right one must travel in the wrong direction, often for a considerable distance, until an opening for a u-turn appears, or else climb over the divider. The predictable result is that the shoulder, or the outermost lane when there is no shoulder present, has become defacto two-way traffic lane for motorcycles, which swarm around the country like flies in the Australian Outback, and for a lesser number of bicycles. My first reaction to this was one of indignation, then came begrudging acceptance, until finally I, now and then, joined in the practice with everyone else.

That was the situation one day in Ayuttaya, when I had gone out sightseeing around the widely-spaced ruins and temples of the town, without my normal load of gear. It was my misfortune to have made a wrong turn onto a road with such a divider. As it made a gentle curve to the left I could see that there was no place to u-turn anywhere ahead. With no one else in the area I turned around on the shoulder and, after pausing for just a couple of seconds for a drink of water, I began riding back the way I came, at a very gentle pace.

Moments later, a fellow on a noisy little motorcycle came zooming around the bend in the road. When he noticed me he foolish applied his full break, and consequently lost control, sliding to the ground and turning perpendicular to my path. In a fraction of a second, his heavy machine encountered my front wheel and I did a header over him, landing on the pavement. I must have been uncharacteristically graceful in so doing, as I was completely undamaged. Not a bruise, scrape, or cut resulted; even my clothes weren’t messed up. The other guy was fine too, as was his motorcycle, as far as I could tell.

However, I would have happily received a sprained shoulder, extensive road rash, or whatever, if it meant that the bike would have been unaffected. Sadly, no. Both the top tube and down tube were bent, and cracked on the bottom side, where they joined the head tube. Consequently the hub end of the fork had been pushed backwards far enough that the wheel banged into the down tube, overlapping it by 2 or 3 centimeters. With a lot of applied muscle, I was able to pull it back just far enough to allow the wheel to spin, and to be able to steer. So I was able to, with great care, roll back to where I was staying, furious over what had just happened.

I suppose that, since I was technically going the wrong way, I must accept most of blame for the incident. However, if the goofball on the motorcycle has simply eased to the right a small amount, instead of losing control, everything would have been fine. In any case, I didn’t get much sleep that night since my plans for the next few months had now been thrown into jeopardy.

The next morning a fresh look at the situation made me feel that the damage would not be too difficult to repair, assuming I could find a shop in Ayutthaya that could re-weld the joints. I had only walked for a few blocks when I spotted a pair of gas cylinders sitting outside a small building. A telltale sign. Returning with the bike, the young guys that worked there, said that they could do it. We tried our best to straighten out the fork with the aid of some long steel rods, and returned it to a passable angle. Moments later I cringed in agony watching my beautiful custom-made frame getting whacked with big hammers, and its lovely paint job literally going up in flames.

When the job was finished, the welder had done a decent job of making fairly attractive joints, and the bike was functional again. After applying some black paint to the burned-out areas it really didn’t look too bad. The fork angle was still a little off, however, and the bike’s handling was noticeably degraded. That improved somewhat when I retightened the headset, which had loosened a bit as it became heated.

In any case, I considered the job to be just a temporary fix. However after riding for a few days, including a small descent, the repair seemed to be durable enough, so I decided to leave it as it was. After a couple of weeks, I had put the repair in the back of my mind assuming that it would hold until the tour was over.

Episode 2:

This one was the real doozy, and it occurred in the largely uncharted backcountry of the Laotian highlands. All day long I had been struggling over really terrible, rocky gravel roads to reach the village of Ban Tha Vieng, the only place in the area that appeared on my map. The road kept getting progressively worse and by mid-afternoon I had only traveled fifty kilometers, or so, with still several to go to reach Tha Vieng. At that point the road was the worst it had been, descending down unreasonably steep slopes and littered with big, round, baseball- to basketball-sized rocks. In some cases it was so bad that I had to walk downhill, while in other places I could inch my way down, rolling barely faster than walking pace. That was the situation on one particularly nasty piece of road.

Suddenly, while slowly negotiating the rocky obstacle course, I realized the sensation of rapidly moving towards the ground. In the first instant I assumed that my front wheel had slipped off to the side of a smooth rock. However, before hitting the ground I noticed the ominous sight of large parts of the bike moving in unusual and opposite directions. The front wheel had indeed hit a big rock but the combination of the heavy braking load, the steep slope, and the impact was too much for the previously weakened joints to handle. This time they failed in the most dramatic way possible, both splitting completely in two, which, of course, resulted in a lack of any sort of connection between the front and rear wheels.

Now, it should represent the pinnacle of obviousness to even the non-cyclists out there that riding down a steep, rocky hill and having one’s bike suddenly separate into two pieces is not an event that most people would choose to experience. I can now confirm the validity of that assertion. Actually, it was not as painful an experience, at least not physically, as you might expect. Since I was just barely moving forward at the time, the two bike halves and I simply fell straight downward, landing together in a twisted heap on top of a bunch of rocks. Once again, apart from a tiny scrape on the side of my left knee I was completely unharmed and, once again, I would have gladly taken a sprained ankle or a broken collarbone, if it meant the bike would have been alright.

I must have sat there in shock, staring in disbelief at what had just happened, for a considerable amount of time before thinking, “Well, I guess the Tour is over.” However, I didn’t have the luxury of sitting there for long, as I was still out in the middle of nowhere, not sure just how far I still had to go to reach Tha Vieng. Getting moving again was not a simple matter. The front half of the bike, now just the wheel, fork, head tube, and handlebars, was still attached to the rear half via the cables, which miraculously had not broken. I had to lay it across the top of the rear half, which still had its full load of gear attached to the rack. The top and down tubes were sticking out into mid-air, and I held onto them and pushed the whole mess forward like a wheelbarrow, albeit a very unstable one.

Walking down the rocky hill like that was slow and tedious, and it seemed like I had gone a kilometer or two, but it was probably much less than that, when I came upon a group of dwellings. I hoped that it was Tha Vieng, but it was actually a much smaller village, consisting of only one or two dozen bamboo and thatch buildings. There were a couple of men standing at the edge of the village as I approached and, after they stopped laughing, they pointing ahead, shouting “Mie, Mie, Mie!” and making a charade of tool usage and “Pssssshhh, Psssssshhhh!” sounds. I learned then that in the Lao language “Mie” means “fix” or “weld”, or perhaps it’s the just name of a guy that can do either of those things. For, just ahead, in a nondescript bamboo building was a welding kit powered by a portable generator.

It was not the kind of professional workshop that I would have preferred, but at that point I had absolutely nothing to loose, so I conveyed, as best I could, to the people there that I would be extremely happy if they could help me repair the damage. In short order the fellow there fired up his equipment and got started as I, once again, looked on in anguish as hammers were flying. This time there were a few little chunks of steel missing at the breaks and he had to use a bunch of old, thick steel bolts as a source of new material to reinforce the joints. By the time he was finished, it was one of the ugliest repairs you’ll ever see, looking as if a steel doughnut was slid over each joint. On the other hand, since the frame had been in two separate pieces this time, it was easier to get the fork aligned properly, and now the angles were closer to normal.

When he was finished, the fellow asked for the equivalent of $2.50. I insisted that that was not enough, and I had a bit of trouble getting him to accept three times that amount. There was no real way that I could explain to him that I had originally spent probably more than he earns in two years on that frame, and he had just restored it from a pile of useless junk into a working bike again. I suppose that I should not have been surprised at how common it is to have steel items repaired in out-of-the-way places around the world, as in most places people actually fix things instead of junking them at the first problem. But there I was, ready to go again. I had thought that I might have been delayed for up to two weeks, but in reality I was moving again after less than two hours.

It was only another five or six kilometers to Tha Vieng, on a somewhat better road. That evening, after getting the bike’s brakes and drivetrain properly aligned again, while lying on a rickety cot in “The Office,” and listening to the sounds of the wedding-singer-cum-comedian, I mulled over the possible courses of action to make a more permanent repair. I could have the framebuilder who originally built the frame make another one and ship it over to me; or I could buy a cheap bike locally, continue riding, and send the frame back to him in the States for repair. Both of those seemed excessively costly, complicated, and time consuming. After a while, once my mind had cleared a little, I came up with a better plan. Since there were plenty of good metal shops and craftsmen in Asia, I would have someone fabricate a steel channel that would run down the back of the head tube, between the top and down tubes, and have it welded to all three tubes.

That would provide a good, sturdy joint, but the only question was where I could have this done. The next place that I would be for more than a couple of days, and which should have had the proper facilities, was Dhaka, Bangladesh, which I would reach in about a month. I assumed that, after the last few days in the Lao hills, there would only be fairly flat, easy riding to reach Dhaka. Wrong again. Myanmar had more big climbs and terrible bumpy roads, with lots of rocks. But the frame held up well through all of that, and I began to feel the additional work might not be necessary. When I arrived in Dhaka I was so tired that I really couldn’t find the time to get the job done. As it turned out there were possible places to have it done there, as, while walking through Chawk Bazaar, I saw several machine shops. Though they looked more like caves than shops, I could see by the parts that they were working on that they did nice work. Nevertheless, I convinced myself that the current repair would be good enough, and indeed it was through the first foray into the Himalayas. But that may not have been the best decision after all.

Episode 3:

This occurred, in all places, in the Tarai of Nepal, where the terrain is flat and the roads are smooth. Smooth, that is except for the bridges, especially those marked by signs that read “Built in 1972 with the assistance of the USSR.” Those never had proper expansion joints and consequently at the end of each pavement panel there is usually a big, severe, bump. However, the particular bridge in question was in generally very good condition.

Riding across, with no other traffic around, I therefore let my guard down a little and was gazing out at the dry river, watching people mine the riverbed for gravel and rocks. Unfortunately, I only looked forward again just in time to see my front wheel dive into a huge bike-eating pothole. I only had time to think, just like Arthur Dent’s bowl of petunias, “Oh no, not again!” The sinister hole was of the worst possible configuration, deep, about a wheel-width across, and with sharp edges. My worst fears wee confirmed when I heard a distinct creaking sound as I came to a stop, my front wheel down in the hole.

Of course, there was no one to blame in this case, except my own, clueless, weak-brained, self. This time, fortunately, the joints did not separate completely, they only cracked, and I stayed upright. Still, I was out of commission again, and I spent a few seconds stomping on the roadway, and shouting expletives into thin air with no one to hear them. By now, however, I had become a little used to the procedures required in such circumstances; walk ahead to then nearest place that can do welding, have the frame repaired, and then move on. It was easier to walk this time, since the bike was still in one piece, and I reached a small town after about twenty minutes. There was a basic bike repair shop there, not the type one would find in the West by any means, but they could do welding. However, the electricity was out and I was told that maybe it would be back in four or five hours, and then they could do the job. Not wishing to wait that long, I arranged a ride in a Tuk Tuk to the next town, 8 km ahead, where the electricity was still on.

It was easy to find the place in town with a welding kit, and before long hammers and sparks were flying again. It was still painful to watch my paint job in flames once more, but the young Nepali guys there seemed to be doing a good job. They fabricated some steel plates to reinforce the joints which were a little less sturdy than what I had planned, but served largely the same purpose. In the end the joints looked a lot better as well. Once again, the going rate for such a repair was about $3.00, and I had a hard time convincing them to accept more, but eventually got the point across.

For a third time, then, I was going again after only a short delay. That repair is still going strong, having survived through roughest Tibet, bad roads in India, and now the start of Africa. I may still have a more “official “repair done at some point, or perhaps not. I’ll just have to see how things work out. For now the old cyclist’s axiom holds true: Steel is Real!

Yet More:

Asia was extremely tough on my bike and gear all around and there were a number of other things that needed repair or replacement, all of which I did during the sea crossing to Africa. They included:

· My normal “end of continent” overhaul, which consists of a completely new drivetrain, cables, brake pads, shoe cleats, computer battery, tubes, and tires (there is a big issue with the tires, but I’ll leave that until later).The drivetrain proved to be the biggest problem in Asia. My normal plan is to replace the whole batch at once, chain, rings, and cassette at the end of each Stage (don’t start the “Chain Replacement Flame War” please.) In Australia, after essentially the same distance, that worked just about right, as the components were just starting to show wear and slightly degraded performance at the end of the Stage. In Asia, however, with so much more distance over gritty, dusty roads, things wore out much earlier, and almost completely. Tibet was what really did it all in. Shortly thereafter, my big ring had worn down enough to be non-usable, and by the time I reached Sri Lanka, the middle was gone too. While there, I shortened my chain by a few links so that I could use most of the cassette cogs while in my granny, and rode that way around Sri Lanka, and across southern India. It was slow, but not as bad as you might think, especially as I was tiring out myself, and may not have gone much faster in any case. Then, with one day left to reach Goa, and three or four more to Mumbai, one last stretch of bad gravel road, in the rain once again, did the granny in as well. The next morning there was little left of the teeth on the granny ring, and with just the slightest incline, I was unable to pedal forward at all. As I mentioned before, that put an end to the Stage a little early, but I really didn’t mind, since the Monsoons arrived early as well. I was going to put a “before and after” picture, to show what extreme chainring wear looks like, up on my Web site, but I forgot to do so, so you’ll just have to use your imagination for now;

· New leather handlebar wrap, to replace the old worn-out leather wrap;

· A rebuild of the pedals (Crank Brothers Candy SL). I had ordered a rebuild kit (I had already used the one I brought with me) to be sent to me early on in Asia, but the shipment got screwed up and I never received it. Fortunately, I discovered a kludge repair that kept me going, and I rode for about the last, oh, 13-14,000 km with no functional pedal bearings at all. Now after being rebuilt, they are good as new again. I like these pedals a lot;

· New Ergo Levers. The old ones were getting sloppy, and a little beat-up. So instead of trying to repair them in the field, I just bought a new set, and sent the old ones home to be repaired later, for use on another bike;

· A new rear rim. Yes, this one replaces the one on the wheel I built in Moree, NSW about a year ago. That one was never very good. I rushed the job, and overtensioned it a little. Afterwards, the wheel took some severe abuse as well, with all sorts of things crashing into it, jamming into it, and otherwise trying to warp it. The result was a number of cracks and failures at the nipple holes, however, the rim (Sun Rhyno Lite – 48h) was fairly easy to keep true even under such harsh conditions, and it lasted a lot longer than it should have. This time I replaced the rim while at sea, so I had plenty of time to do a good job (I hope.) Unfortunately, the replacement was the last of my spare rims, so hopefully I won’t have any additional problems.

· And finally, here’s one to send shivers down the spine of every phred list member. My Brooks Saddle broke! I use the Swift model, which has the Titanium undercarriage, and it was that which broke, in three places. Ironically, I never really wanted the titanium, I only wanted the profile and shape of the Swift, but it only comes with titanium, so that’s what I got. I’m not 100% sure just when the breaks occurred, but I first noticed them midway through Tibet, so I assume they happened near that time. Probably, when I was going over a really bumpy stretch of road at near-freezing temperatures on one of the high passes. The little shackle that slides up the rails and tensions the leather broke, as did the rear rivet plate where both of the rails attach. The result was that the saddle had no tension, and the nose was slightly twisted at sort of a funny angle. Surprisingly, the saddle remained reasonably rideable, and held its shape fairly well for a few weeks. That is, until I reached south India and Sri Lanka, where the high heat and humidity really took its toll. After then the saddle looked more like a rotten brown banana, and the leather bottomed out on to the top of the seat post. However, it was still fairly comfortable even under those circumstances, so it didn’t affect my schedule much at all. At the end of the Stage, I purchased a new shackle (steel this time) from Wallingford Bike. They also sell the complete undercarriage, but Bill said that it’s almost impossible for anyone but the factory to replace it (which makes me wonder why they sell it at all.) So, I put the new shackle on, and did another kludge repair of the rear plate using some little braces made from bent-up pieces of an old spoke, and a big blob of epoxy. Surprisingly, that all worked quite well, and, for the time being at least, the saddle is as good as new. The Brooks leather really is a very resilient and durable material.

After all of this, I’m reminded of one of my favorite jokes by the comedian Steven Wright, which goes: “I have the hatchet that George Washington used to chop down the Cherry Tree..... Of course, I had to replace the handle.... And the head.... but.... It occupies the same space.”

So when I get home, I may not have the same bike, but it will occupy the same space!

Cheers,

Mike

--

The Tour of Gondwana

May 02005 - Oct 02007

http://www.terminalia.org/tour