After asking a multitude of people, I found one, and bought two tubes off a nice old man. I said 'Adios' to him, and then promptly returned. My rear rack was hanging off one screw. The other one had sheared off again. Stupidly, I'd left one of my rear panniers containing my laptop with Luke to avoid it being stolen if I had to lock up my bike outside a store. The weight imbalance put so much strain on the other side of the rack that when I carelessly rested my bike on the ground in the store, the screw failed.
$%^#!
Last time this had happened, it cost us the whole day and I was really, really annoyed with myself and really not liking the prospect of having to stay another night in Castelldefels. Let alone the fact that I had no way of letting Luke know what had happened, so he was just going to have to sit there, no matter how long it took.
Luckily, the guy at the bike shop was a bit of a genius. He had it fixed in about three minutes! To get the half of the screw that was still lodged in the boss hole (at least I think that's what it's called) out, he used an angle grinder to cut a groove into the screw and then simply used a screw driver to get it out. Pure genius! It also cut a little groove into my frame, but under the circumstances, I wasn't going to complain:P
I rode back awkwardly with my heavy rack pack slung over my shoulder and my backpack on my front, and gave Luke the new tubes. Unfortunately, although I'd gottten the right size, they were the wrong type. Doh! Back I went, riding as fast as I could because it was almost 1pm and there was a good chance that was when he'd be going on his lunch break. I got lost and by the time I got back to the shop, it was 1.15, but luckily he was open until 2:)
He was happy to do a swap for some tubes with Presta valves, and I rode back to Luke again. We put the tube on and pulled out the pump to inflate it..Hmm, this doesn't seem to work. The valve appeared to be stuffed. Argh! Luckily the other one worked, so while Luke put that on, I rode back to the shop to see if I could exchange it for another one (they were four euros a pop after all). The guy did something nimbly with his fingers and when he put it on the air compressor, it blew up fine haha. He must've thought I was quite an idiot:P
So finally, after having spent about five hours to repair one flat, we got on the road. The route went right along the sea, so there were some spectacular views to be had. I didn't really get a chance to enjoy the vista though because riding required absolute concentration. The road was very windy and undulated up and down the whole time, so it was quite tricky staying in control. Add to that the fact that there was no shoulder, so we had about ten cars stuck behind us the whole time, and you can see why we were glad when we reached Sitges and a less scenic road.
Because of the very late start, we didn't make it much further than that, calling it quits two doors down in Vilanova I La Geltru. Dinner was bought and then after investigating a red herring of an Albergue, we made our way to the camping ground, where we're spending the night. It's quite an impressive establishment with a restaurant, supermarket, nature park and about a million campsites. Quite expensive for camping it seems to me at 24 euros for the night, but still a bargain compared to last night.
It's not cold at all here on the coast, and I'm anticipating a restful night with an early start tomorrow:)
Campsite
No comments:
Post a Comment