Cycling The Road Less Travelled

As mentioned before, my back wheel has been throwing hissy fits so we decided to train it back to Bangkok to try and get it repaired. From the train station, we went straight to Bangkok’s most popular and well known bike shop. The shop is incredibly well stocked with high end racing and mountain bikes; rims that cost more then our bicycles dangle on display from the ceiling. Surely, if we can’t get it fixed here, we won’t be getting it fixed. To make a long story short, after some humming and hahing and going through drawers of spare parts, the mechanic concluded he would not be able to fix it. He took it apart and tried cleaning all the bits, but a quick spin around the park proved that wasn’t going to cut it. To make matters worse, buying a whole new wheel wasn’t an option either. In the whole shop, they didn’t have a 700 series touring wheel that would carry the weight of the panniers. Dang! We can’t complain about the shop, they did try and didn’t charge us for the service.

We tried another well stocked bike shop and again no luck. Okay, we have a real problem now. We’re confident the wheel won’t make it and from the research we’ve done, these two shops were our best chance in the area to get it fixed. Crap!

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<cue dramatic music>…pa pa pa paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam

With a failing back wheel, dwindling options for bike repair and depleted funds, what will Spiros and Maria do? Will they:

• Pack up the bikes and go to some island to spend the remaining time lounging in hammocks?…possibly but unlikely.
• Pack it up and go back to Canada early?…ain’t gonna happen.
• Figure something out using electrical tape and duct tape?…possibly, that has worked before.
• Sell the bikes and use the money to go to Vang Vieng to watch endless Friends reruns for the next three months?…not bloody likely, maybe if it was South Park.
• Find and befriend another cyclist, lure them into a false sense of security and then bop them over the head with a tire pump and steal their wheel?…quite possibly.
• Drown their sorrows in banana shakes?…very likely.

Stay tuned for another exciting episode of “Cycling the Road Less Travelled”.

<cue cheesy soap opera music>

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