Aaron and I started early to avoid the late afternoon heat and we were making great time thanks to a favorable tailwind. We had a delicious breakfast in the little town of Hartline. The food wasn't fancy--just your basic omelet, hash browns, overeasy eggs, etc.--but well prepared. But the cool thing about it was that the greeter, the server, the chef, the check out clerk and the busboy were all the same lady. It was so quaint I almost melted.
Back on the road, wind still mostly at our backs, cruising along through miles and miles of wheat fields to our day's destination of Davenport, WA, Aaron pulled over to the side of the road for a water break and to wait for me to catch up. (He was almost always ahead of me.) As he described it, he hit some loose blacktop that looked just like the regular blacktop, lost control, almost regained control, then took a nasty fall. The bike rolled onto him and he was "flopping around like a turtle on it's back."
I didn't see the incident, but a lady in a pickup truck did and she made her husband stop to check up on Aaron. When I came rolling up to the scene a couple of minutes later, I was confused as to why Aaron would be talking to a middle-aged woman on the side of the road. Then I saw the blood flowing from a wound on the side of his knee and the woman was offering to take him to the hospital--an offer that Aaron declined. It was the kind of scrape that all bike riders get at one time or another. The next minute, Aaron examined his bike and found that the rear derailleur was bent into the spokes. He determined he could possibly bend it back but he would need a big wrench to do so and, of course, nobody was carrying a big wrench. So the friendly couple offered to throw the bikes into the back of the truck and drive us to the next town where Aaron figured we could borrow a wrench at an auto repair shop.
We had a few options at this point but we narrowed them down to these two: A) I would finish the ride into Davenport and send Aaron off alone with two complete strangers, thereby allowing me to preserve the purity of my Seattle to Hastings ride. B) I would ride in the truck with Aaron to ensure that if these seemingly friendly people were actually psycho killers, we would both be murdered and buried together out in this wasteland.
I chose option "B." So, when all is said and done, and when I show up in Hastings somewhere around September 1, you will be able to say, "Technically, Greg, you did NOT ride all the way from Seattle to Hastings."
To which I will reply, "But it was only a 25-mile glitch."
And you can shrug your shoulders and say, "Sorry."
The owner/mechanic at the repair shop in Davenport was also very friendly and after insisting that Aaron clean the blood off his leg, he was glad to share a gigantic crescent wrench and even helped hold the bike while Aaron carefully bent the derailleur almost back into place. In first gear it still rubbed against the spokes but he felt that it was good enough to get back on the bike and ride into Spokane. So he rode the final 50 miles of the day with no first gear.
 |
| A different kind of bike club. |
No comments:
Post a Comment