March 4, 2018
D29: Sơn La to Quỳnh Nhai
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I'm not sure if I can classify this latest mishap into the category of "things that have gone wrong this trip" because, all things being equal, it could have gone a lot more wrong than it did. In general, it wasn't a terribly great day. The mountains are steep, the flat places are more like up and down places that don't go up (nor down) very far at a time, the scenery is mostly uninspiring.
Also, my ass hurts.
My ass hurting is a mishap in and of itself, I suppose.
I've got two pairs of bike shorts which I bought last year on the road after the chamois in one of the two new pairs I got pre-trip literally shredded itself. The first pair was bought at a Giant bikes the day the seams all separated, the padding escaped, and the escaped padding on the pair I was wearing scratched me bloody. The second pair was bought three or four days later at a Merida bike shop because they'd otherwise been very helpful and I wanted to give them money but they had nothing else I could conceivably want.
Both pairs of shorts are among the most comfortable bike shorts I have ever worn. They are even more comfortable than the Pearl Izumi shorts I bought one summer in the US for more than 5x the total cost of both pairs combined. However, there is one slight problem... the thread for the seams appears to have been made out of recycled tissue paper. On average, I mend these shorts once per third wearing. Sometimes, more often. Mending one spot almost certainly means that someplace of the same verticality will soon pop open.
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I've been wearing and washing the Merida shorts since Mai Chau. No particular reason, they were just the ones I put on that morning and the weather has been cooperative with allowing my shorts to dry overnight after handwashing. At some point, one of the only seams that had not yet popped open, popped. I would think that the chamois seam is the only one on a pair of bike shorts that isn't under stress. But, it came open and unraveled itself and the padding started to move around so that some places bulged while other places had nothing. It's not as bad (either on a damage to the shorts or a damage to me scale) as the amazing self destructing bike shorts which were the reason I bought these shorts mid-tour last summer but I have all sorts of odd little almost bruises and the beginnings of chafe.
That's not the mishap for today though.
The mishap for today is a bit of a doozy.
Today's route took me up the QL6/AH13 most of the way to Thuận Châu and a turnoff which googlemaps tells me is a village or small town called Pằn Nà. From there I would follow what all of the maps tell me is DT107 but the milemarkers call the QL6B. I so appreciate the way that sometimes the roadstones say I'm on a more important road than the maps and sometimes they say I'm on a less important road than the maps. The way in which I have no clue to what sort of road a road will be really helps (not) with planning out which roads to take.
My plan was to stop in the small town of Quỳnh Nhai on the banks of the Da River and then, depending on how my legs felt and the outcome of my research, either go north and west to Mường Lay and Sa Pả or go more or less straight north. I rather preferred the "straight north" option as it seemed, from the topo view, to run along the bottom of mountains with all the best scenery towering up above me but far less climbing or the ugly dirty type of poverty.
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I did, in fact, stop in Quỳnh Nhai or at least on the outskirts of Quỳnh Nhai. After adjusting my brakes in the morning to account for the amount of brake pad I'd worn off going down mountains, I soon became aware that my rear wheel was out of true. Most wrenching skills are merely things I'm inefficiently competent (which is almost but not quite the same as incompetent) at, but truing a wheel remains a complete mystery to me and I'm not carrying any tools that could do anything about this.
I've switched from cantilevers back to V brakes and have adjustable TravelAgents on my brakes now so that both sets of the brakes I have mounted on my handlebars work more or less the same although I still feel like the road bike brakes have more finesse and that I have more control using them on long descents. Luckily, this means I could loosen the brake up some without tools and, although the out of true wheel would annoy me all day long, at least it stopped catching on the brake once per revolution. (I suspect yesterday evening's stellar potholes to have had something to do with my wheel only just now becoming uneven enough for me to notice.)
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Arriving on the outskirts of Quỳnh Nhai, I stopped at the first motorcycle repair shop I saw. I'd seen these all along the road but if I didn't exactly have more confidence in something on the edge of a town than I did in a middle-of-nowhere shanty, I had confidence that, should they royally fuck up, there would be food and lodging and perhaps even transportation. We talked by body language and hand gestures and onomatopoeia like thump thump thump thump and he sent me three or four shops down to a bicycle repair shop with a half disassembled upright single speed in front of it.
At first he insisted it was my brake. My brakes are too tight. Just loosen the brakes. But I was persistent and eventually got him to notice that the rear wheel did in fact have a wobble and the brakes only caught in one spot. We took my rear wheel off in a joint effort of quick release skewers being a known but not familiar thing and then, once the skewer was loose, him just having more experience at quickly getting a wheel off than I did. The truing stand—made of a vise clamp and an old front fork—was assembled and he started to work on my wheel. Tightened this spoke. Loosened that one. Spun the wheel. Tightened, loosened, spun. Tightened, loosened, spun.
And stopped.
Pulled the wheel out of the truing stand.
Brought it over to me and pointed at the rim.
Rubbed his fingers along the rim.
Gestured at me to do the same.
There, barely visible in the dark, but visible enough, was a hairline crack running along the admittedly well worn brake bed. My first question, of course, was "is it still safe to ride?" which got me the answer "I can finish straightening it but you should not use your rear brake".
Should not use my rear brake. Hmm... let me think about that. I'm in a country where 10% grades on main roads are normal. I'm in the mountains. I've got roughly another 1000km planned before I make it home and I should not use my rear brake. That sounds like an excellent idea!
Of course a town which is the capital of a district whose total population is around 70,000 people that town isn't going to just happen to have a bike shop with 700c rims, or 700c wheels, or 700c tires, or road bike anything really. They suggested going back to Sơn La because maybe a bike shop there... but at least they were willing to try calling someone on the phone and talking in Vietnamese for a while before coming back and suggesting maybe Hanoi.
The bus to Hanoi comes through around 7pm and, as luck would have it, I'm right across the street from the bus station. I buy and eat dinner from the snack shop next door which appears to be run by a family member. We go to the bus station. But when the bus arrives, it's already full and there's no place for me. In the morning then...
Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 1,465 km (910 miles)
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Mary uses the New Zealand Company Ground Effect entry level Jitterbug knicks and is very happy with the comfort and durability. I don't think that they still make the kit in NZ but their quality control is excellent. I have the male version.
https://www.groundeffect.co.nz
6 years ago
6 years ago
Can't beat 100,000 dong for a rebuilt wheel.
6 years ago