Day #47, Little Falls to Latham NY

You start a trip like this with the goal to ride every single inch from coast to coast. What we don't understand during the goal setting process is that part of reaching this goal is under your own control, but there are other factors which can prevent you from what you set as your goal. Weather, road construction, and mechanical issues, all out of your personal control can all cause you to miss part of a riding day.
Today I had my crank bearings disintegrate about twenty miles into our scheduled seventy five. I got a call in to Mike Munk the trip leader and he was able to shuttle me up to the first SAG stop. Mike put my bike on the work stand and took apart the crank, what we found was not good, one of the bearings had disintegrated and wore a large groove into the crank shaft. The damage was bad enough that the crank set would have to be replaced. I trip to a bike store would be required because we were not able to remove one of the bearings with the tools at hand. I also was presented with a couple additional options, Mimi's husband Ward, who had joined the trip in Niagara Falls, offered me his expensive bike for the day, saying it was more important for Joel to do every mile than for him to complete this one day of a partial trip. Mike also offered to tear apart his wife Barb's bike and use parts of it to repair my bike (the parts would be removed at the end of the trip). I decided that I needed to be at the bike store to approve of whatever charges they wanted for the parts and labor to fix the bike. Both were very generous offers from people who were strangers two months ago, but who now are part of my bike family.
Mike and I set out for a bike store, the first place the internet sent us was no longer a bike shop, the second was Trek dealer, but so small as to not stock the required parts, third times a charm as Freeman's Bridge Sports was able to obtain the parts from a local distributor within an hour. They then pointed me to the diner across the road for lunch. The mechanic installed the parts and had me back on the road, sadly not where I left off at the twenty mile mark, but right on the planned route to the hotel in Latham. I rode the last fifteen to twenty miles and finished the day. In someway I think the problem was preventable, I had the bike gone over before the trip by my home bike shop, I had Jim the trip mechanic take a look at it the last two nights and he was not able to diagnose the problem. Maybe I didn't communicate the symptoms I was experiencing clearly enough to lead him in the right direction. It could be my style of riding, I push as high a gear as you can for as long as you can before thinking about down shifting. But it doesn't matter, because in the end its not the total miles, its the places, experiences, the people, the new friends. My life has been enriched by the trip and I am sure it will open new possibilities for more adventures during the rest of my life.

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