I crashed my bike today.
The bike path that I take from our YWAM base to the township of Madryn, and the new road.
Riding to town I always take the small trail that leads through the big open spaces and weaves amongst the Calafate thorn bushes to get to the edge of the city. Recently the city started coming closer to us, with a new street freshly cut through the open land. It also cut directly across my trail.
Each day there is machinery working on this new road. The other day they dug a deep trench beside the road to lay water pipes, leaving large mounds of dirt beside the trench and the trail impassable. The next day it was filled in, but mounds of dirt were still there, and it was these mounds of dirt that caught me out today.
The new road cutting through my bike trail with the mound of dirt that “got me.”
I carried the bike over the first time. I should have carried it over today too.
Maybe it was the super soft dirt that kept filling my shoes when I carried the bike over. Or perhaps it came from one of those fond memories of my mountain-bike-racing days when I could make it over anything without getting off the bike. In any case today, instead of slowing down to get off, I sped up intent on getting over that dirt mound without stopping.
But I stopped. Suddenly.
I had not considered my made-of-every-cheap-part-you-can-find bike that was propelling me, nor had I considered that the loosely dumped dirt may be full of Calafate thorn bushes with their strong sharp spines. It also came as a surprise to discover that once I reached the other side of the dirt pile it gave way quickly to a hard surface that had not been there the last time I came past.
My bike went down, and hard. I followed quickly after it.
I was falling, with my feet clamped to the pedals – a great system except for moments like these. Somehow though I managed to escape the clutches of those pedals and the certain doom they spelled. With difficulty I lunged forward, over the rapidly sinking handlebars. My feet clumsily searched for a landing, hitting hard with the weight of a falling body behind them. Suddenly my knees give way, and I am on way way down into the Patagonian powder dust that rises to meet me in an impenetrable cloud as first my knees and then my hands thud heavily into it.
I had survived.
I turn around and pick up the bike to move on. It doesn’t move. A second attempt does nothing to convince it.
The buckled wheel, now partly fixed but needing much more.
Looking down, the wild buckle in the front wheel reveals the problem. It is bent wildly out of shape. The buckled wheel refused to even move through the front forks. Reaching a clearing I turn the bike upside down to work on it and hear the unmistakable hiss of escaping air. There was more than just a buckled wheel that would need to be fixed.
Wherever I go with the bike, under my seat are most of the tools necessary to fix it. Today I would need most of them.
Two large thorns protruded from the front tyre. Pulling the first one released a stronger escape of air. Pulling the next one allowed the now partially deflated tyre to deflate completely. It was like watching a balloon poked with a needle.
The buckled wheel proved a problem. Even after pulling every trick in the book to try and coax it back into shape, after an hour of work it remained a wildly wobbling mess with no front brakes. It was the best I could do. At least it now spun. After fixing the holes in my tube and pulling yet another deeply embedded thorn from my tyre I am ready to go. Climbing on to ride the bike reveals yet another problem. The forks have been bent back so much that the front wheel hits my feet as I pedal.
Fixing the mess that I had made of the bike.
Walking out of the local bike shop, I now have new forks and a new front wheel in my hands. This crash just cost me almost $100 pesos. The next time I will carry the bike over and put up with the dirt in my shoes. It will save me both time and money.
In this case, stopping was wiser than going.
I have arrived in Buenos Aires to get my residency here. It would have been easier and more convenient to do this process in Puerto Madryn where I am now based, but the Immigration branch there could not do anything with my English language documents. So here I am in Buenos Aires trying to get everything together. The problem is that even though there is information about all of this, most people that have been through it have told me that there is always one more paper needed before you can actually start (or sometimes finish) the process.
