October 7, 1993
To Lapalisse
Quite an eventful and stressful day. It started very pleasantly - under broken skies we pedaled north through the Bourbon region, easily and enjoyably dispatching the last significant hills on the trip, passing through a series of small towns, enjoying the churches (especially a lovely 12th century structure in Chatel-Montagne). After coasting out of the hills into the lowlands of the Loire valley, with nearly flat country stretching to the northern horizon, Rachael finally had her first flat tire of the tour, 30k from Lapalisse.
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When preparing to remount her wheel after repairing her tube, I was shocked to find that I also had a flat. An unprecedented mishap - two flats at the same location. More astonishingly and disastrously yet, when replacing my wheel my derailleur disintegrated, unrepairably. After the astonishment wore off and the reality of our situation sank in, we settled on a disaster recovery plan. Rachael pedaled on ahead of me to Lapalisse to scout out the town for a bicycle shop, and I labored on behind using a singular paddling technique with my feet on the ground. With some practice I acquired a bit of technique, in able to race along after Rachael at about 12k/hour for the 30k to Lapalisse.
Once there, we stopped in at the only bike mechanic's shop in town - a very small enterprise - and waited around while he unsuccessfully attempted to replace it with two different derailleurs. This plan failing, we decided to take the train to Vichy, the nearest city, and biked/paddled the 2k uphill to the train station. There, with some difficulty we came to understand that we could not take our bikes on the train from this station. Coasting back to town again, we scouted out the only car rental agency, with the help of the tourism office. The car rental office, another very small establishment, was another kilometer uphill to the east. Paddling out there, we arrived a bit before closing and were told that the next morning we could rent a van for the day for 300 ff + mileage. We agreed to this, for lack of a more promising idea. Coasting back to town, we stopped at the first hotel we came to in order to stay near the rental agency; and called it a (frustrating) day.
After stewing over the situation in our hotel room for a while, I decided I would rather paddle 24k to Vichy than pay for the rental car and commit to returning it to Lapalisse. After all, Vichy might not be able to repair my bike either. Rachael agreed with this conclusion, but after further discussion we finally hit upon the essential inspiration - and so I went out to the garage to fetch my bike, and under street lights in a light rain I removed the broken derailleur, shortened the chain, and converted my Trek into a one-speed.
Both of us were delighted by the serendipity of the situation - after five weeks of biking through mountainous terrain, my derailleur broke on the very day, within miles even, of the point at which one speed distance travel was feasible. The map shows barely a hill between here and Paris, 250-300 miles away.
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 2,291 km (1,423 miles)
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