Hotching with bikes

I've already had one bike break down - the derailer twisted itself into bits right after leaving Picton and I got it replaced and pedalled on. Betty the bike didn't seem quite happy though, and both me and a couple of English lads on bikes (Alan and Rob of the Possum Posse) fettled quite a lot around to fix her up to run smoothly. It didn't quite work out fully, and the blame was put on a slightly twisted derailer hanger in need of a change in Nelson.

I didn't make it any further than Pelorous Bridge, which is app. 15 km off Havelock. There I had a lunchbreak, went up the hill and heard a nasty crunching sound, which I recognized before I put my foot down as a broken derailer. This time it was the hanger snapping of, the gear wire breaking, and the rear tyre axle which holds Bob the trailer bending a bit. Not possible to go anyfurther anywhere. The ressourceful person runs up to the Kiwi experience bus full of kids with rasta hair, hangovers, purple harem pants and new SDI's and asks the driver if there are any free seats. There isn't. The driver's pretty cool, though, and checks if there are other buses passing by today. There isn't.

Pelorous Bridge has a nice little camp site, so there's no need to panick, apart from the fact that there's no phone reception, and I was supposed to call Madeleine when getting to Nelson. I can't even call to say I may be a day late.

The resourceful person then mills around the parking lot noting all the big cars that could fit a bike, asking if they are going to Nelson. No one is.

Then the ressourceful person stretches out a thumb, and several sympathetically stop to ask if they can help with a quick fix, they do have tools, but unfortunately not space for a bike and trailer.

I do another car park round and someone does have space, it turns out, and that's the NMIT having been on a field trip with the full Asian student body. I go in one car with bike, and the luggage goes in the other van, and all goes to Nelson, where the story ends happily at Stewarts bike shop, where everything damaged is straightened, replaced and fixed within a couple of hours. Betty the bike rolls smoothly on again, and I apparently wear out chain per thousand km.