The Spoke Saga

Not being a cyclist, I hadn’t experienced a broken spoke until that fateful day south of Fort Bragg when a metallic ping rang out halfway up a killer series of switchbacks. That innocuous ‘twang’ resulted in me becoming semi-resident at the KOA campsite near Manchester beach, which — thankfully — was no great hardship.

Three days, a couple of bus rides, a new spoke and $50 later, I was back on the road. Having had the broken spoke replaced, and all the spokes re-tensioned, my bike was almost pleasant to ride. We still crawled up hills, of course (that’s my fault), but we could cruise downhill without the bike threatening to wobble itself into oblivion. The pleasantness didn’t last long, about 50 miles. Then there was another snap followed by my thoughts on spokes and their lack of commitment to this trip. This latest casualty didn’t buckle the back wheel too much and, as I was far from anywhere, I pushed on.

Seventy miles later, a San Francisco bike shop suggested a new rear wheel. My solid tyres were a problem though, they didn’t have the correct tool to work with them and two of their mechanics has previously broken their thumbs trying to wrestle the tyres. Two mechanics. Broken thumbs. What can you say to that? Plan B was to change all the spokes but not the rim. Cycling out of San Francisco I was $98 poorer but a set of spokes richer and relieved to have resolved the annoying spoke issue. The bike shop had suggested getting the new spokes re-tensioned in about 100 miles’ time, which would be in Monterey Bay or thereabouts. I’d barely covered half that distance when one of the new spokes called it a day. Sorry if this is getting boring, it was for me too. I limped into Santa Cruz on what felt like one of those wonky fairground bikes and consoled myself with a burrito the size of my head.

The bike shop fun continued the next morning. Why explore Santa Cruz and go looking for sea otters when you can do a tour of the bike shops instead, right? One shop could work with solid tyres but didn’t have a suitable wheel while another couldn’t work with solid tyres (thumbs!) but had a wheel. All in, that came to another $170. The financial damage of this issue (we’re at $318 now) was greater than I had expected, the time cost was considerable and, as bad as either, this cemented my conclusion that my bike is not up to the job. My main concern when shopping for a touring bike had been whether it would be tough enough to survive the journey and I don’t feel that it has been. We’ve managed another 76 trouble-free miles on the new wheel but, for sure, this will be the one and only big cycling trip we do together.