Erechin, Brasil

As I pushed my bike out of the garage of the Hotel California in Cruz Alta I heard a rubbing sound on my front wheel.  “Ah yes,” I remembered. I had been aware of it the last couple of hours of riding in the rain the day before.  I’d been forced off onto a rough shoulder innumerable times in the rain and there was no telling what damage that rough riding had caused, hopefully nothing more than a little truing of my front wheel.

I meant to tend to it that night, but having to leave my bike in the garage of the hotel it slipped my mind.  When I examined the wheel I discovered a severe rupture in the rim, a flap of metal sticking out, a full-fledged disaster.  I had been fortunate that the protruding metal pointed forward otherwise my brake pad could have caught it and catapulted me.  

I pulled out my GPS and typed in “bicicleta” in hopes that there might be a bike shop in Cruz Alta.  Lo and behold there was, about a mile away.  I was getting a late start, after nine, so I wouldn't have to wait for it to open.  My delay was thanks to a surprise feast of a breakfast that came with my room.  I had been told, or so I thought, that there would be coffee in the morning.  I didn’t know that the Portuguese term for breakfast is “café de manha.”

When I was ready to leave and dropped off my room key at the desk, the clerk pointed to a room with a huge spread of food and repeated “café de manha.”  It was a king’s banquet of cheese and cold cuts and bread and pizza and lasagna and sandwiches, two cakes, a platter of fruit, juice and a pitcher of yogurt drink.  I gorged on  two platefuls, and felt as if I’d gotten enough calories for the day.  If every motel offered such a bounty, staying in motels suddenly became much more tempting than I’d prefer.

As I headed to the bicycle shop with a sunken feeling in my stomach that all that food couldn’t relieve, I hoped it would have a competent mechanic who could build me a new wheel with my generator hub, rather than having to buy a replacement wheel.  It would be a major blow to lose my charging capabilities, though not as much of a disaster if it had happened on my last two trips to Africa, where electricity was hard to come by.  I’d be able to make do here, using outlets in restaurants, at least until I reached the Amazon where restaurants might turn scarce.  And I did have solar charging capabilities as well.

At first glance the bike shop, packed with bikes on the floor and hanging from the ceiling along with wheels and rims and tires, looked as if it would have just what I needed, a rim to build a new wheel.  If a mechanic wasn’t available I might even be able to attempt it myself.  

Three middle-aged men were tending to the shop—the manager, a mechanic and a salesman.  The salesman pulled down a wheel with a disc brake, implying it was the only 700 wheel they had.  I gestured at my generator hub and pointed up at the rims.  He pulled one down and showed that it wasn’t a 700, so wouldn’t work.  Nor would the wheel with the disc brake.  He let me know the nearest bike shop with what I needed was 100 miles away, either back to Santa Maria or up ahead in Passo Fundo.  

I had removed my wheel and the mechanic in the back was examining it to see if he could repair it enough for me to continue on.  He didn’t seem hopeful.  I was willing to continue riding with it, as I had already ridden on it for twenty-five miles or so.  When I took the wheel back and was about to put it back on my bike, both the mechanic and the salesman became alarmed, shaking their heads and waving their arms indicating the wheel could explode at any time. 

They had jabbered away at me in Portuguese from the very beginning, leaving me to only surmise at what they were saying.  They might have been offering from the very beginning to disassemble one of the disc brake wheels for its rim, but I didn’t pick up on that or even consider that as a possibility.  But that is what they now made clear they would do.  That was too good to be true.  I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that their rim would work, as it had a deeper dish which might not accommodate my spokes, but I was willing to trust their expertise.  I started to disassemble the spokes from my wheel, but they wanted to do it themselves, so I went and sat in a corner of the shop and read Theroux’s “Deep South” on my iPad and let my huge breakfast digest

I felt relieved and thought back to a couple of recent similar incidents where a mechanical calamity had been resolved when it had appeared most dire. This was my third tour in a row where I’d broken a part that was hard to come by, initially feeling crestfallen, but then saved.  This past summer in France I had to backtrack twenty-five miles to a shop that could replace my unusual bottom bracket and crank set after a most benevolent mechanic in one shop called all over to find what I needed.

Later this fall I spend a day in Iowa hopping from bike shop to bike shop outside of Des Moines and then in the city trying to find a not so common race of sealed bearings for my rear wheel.  And now this.  I’ve gone years and years touring all over the world with nothing more serious than a flat tire or broken spoke or broken cable.  But as with the other two seeming disasters, I found kindly folk who went above and beyond coming to my rescue.   

Not even an hour later, my latest saviors had completed the transplant.  They’d even replaced my brake pads, as they showed me metal was starting to show through.  My bike was in better shape than when it had arrived in Uruguay.  I didn’t care what all this might cost.  As it was, it was the same as my stay at the Hotel California, a mere $22.50. 

The bike rode smoother than ever as I headed back out into the rolling terrain.  Over the next two days I gained another thousand feet as the plateau I’m on has risen to 2,500 feet. I hope it doesn’t dip in the next 1,100 miles to Brasilia at nearly 4,000 feet.   I was able to camp in a pine forest outside of Erechin.  

Up away from the coast, the temperature has stayed below 80, making for ideal cycling, other than all the hills keeping me under seventy miles a day even with seven hours in the saddle. I’m 2,100 miles from the Amazon.  I had been hoping to reach it by Christmas.  The terrain will have to flatten for that to happen.