Ride Thirteen

The order of the day today was 'Get thy bloody bike fixed!'

Celeste has taken a few knocks this trip and yesterday saw her break a third spoke. Once again on the drive side so I needed to get to the Kutret Guloglu Bisiklet bike shop in Famagusta. Drive side spoke replacement requires the removal of the cassette (rear cogwheels gubbins) and that means chain whip and cassette removal tools are required. These are to heavy to carry on a bike and I don't have them anyway.

So it was leg it into town and hope that the shop was open, and had the Campagnolo tools, not just the more popular Shimano.

Before rolling up at the shop I made a point of getting 'lost' in town. I knew where the shop was but had time and wanted to see a bit more of the town. A bit more of the town is exactly th esame as th erest of the town however, and I ditched plan A, adopted plan B and headed directly to the bike shop dodging lunatic drivers with typical city attitudes. ME FIRST YOU DIE ME NO CARE, that kind of attitude, th ekind displayed by drivers in cities all over the world.

I was greeted like an old friend in the bike shop. There arn't that many Bianchi clad cyclists around these parts so I stand out like an oversized Turquoise Goat in a herd of sheep. The two guys running this shop work fast and well. They don't have bike stands, preferring to sit on the floor or on small stools to work on the steady inflow of mainly low end mountain bikes, casualties of Famagustas moron drivers and poor road surfaces. While I was there two local people walked in a bought new low end mountain bikes. The guys built these up from the boxes in minutes at the same time as fixing my spokes and truing my wheel, shouting at van drivers on the other side of the street and trying hard not to look directly and the cleavage of one of their customers buying a childs bike. The floor of th eshop is littered with anciant bicycle bones, rags, chains, all manner of useful junk. Pumping of tyres is achieved via a compressor poked up through an outside man hole cover from the basement. It's not capable of reaching the 120psi I have in my Scwalbe durano plus tyres and I wondered how many goats were on the basement treadmill powering it.

In this shop everything seems possible. You can pay in either TL Euros, or Visa and do doubt exchange bike parts for others etc. It's not a posey trendy bike store, more of a hands on down and dirty mechanics first store, run by technically proficiant guys without all the flash high end gear you take for granted in UK bike stores. Here the number one reason for exisitance is to fix customers bikes, not sell them a new state of the art £6,000 new carbon bling machine to ride to the shops on. TL30 got me two new drive side spokes, a wheel true and all my brakes and headset and cables checked and reset. Cheap compared to UK prices.

The ride back was a simple heads down stretch out on the aero bars dash back along the coast. This was not a 'joy ride', simply a practical let's get this fixed type of morning ride. I'm putting my faith in miracles and Cyclops that no more spoke will go on this trip. My wheels are old and the spokes brittle, but they will last until I get back to the UK and can get new wheels. This I have decided will happen! In the meantime I've got to know a good bike mechanic here a little better, always a good thing.

25 miles
24 mph top speed

The exertions of this mornings meagre Twenty Five miler meant that it was the right time to put another holiday plan into action. My Cyclists Tan line eradication policy had been on the back burner since arrival due to the cycling getting in the way. The Jacuzzi was just the job for my aching leg muscles, then it was with a heavy heart that this afternoon I finally bit the bullet and hit the sun bed next to the pool.

Wearing cycling kit all day out here leaves one with 'interesting' tan lines. These look even more ridiculous when wearing speedos, not as ridiculous as wearing speedos on a bicycle though I reasoned.

An hour on the sun bed was enough for me. Talk about dull, how do people do it all day? Just laying there doing nothing, allowing the mind to wander, dwell, and inevitably uncover things that are successfully buried on the bike. Nope, I'm definately not one for lounging around a swimming pool, no matter how wonderful it looks. Now give me a small beach in a rocky cove somewhere and I'm all yours, but this 'pompous poolside lazyness, with much posing thrown in', is not a universe I feel worth travelling to regularly. However for one hour today it was nice to feel my legs not turning. I'm lucky to have the choice.

After a nice home cooked meal of rice and chicken and grilled peppers it was time to catch the football game.

I wonder how Gordon is doing on his road crossing.