arctic-cycler.com

Today was a day of frustration. Cycling from one bike shop to the next in the glorious, sunny weather, finding someone to fix my spoke. I was in my civilian clothing, passing cyclists kitted out with their cycling clothes and luggage clearly heading for the north cape. I couldn’t help but tell them I was just getting a spoke fixed. I was one of them..

The first bike shop only sold bikes, but pointed me to a second, some 8 km away at the other end of the town (with a minor hill in between). They couldn’t help, but perhaps a third. Back over the hill. The third does repairs, but the mechanic is on holidays. I took to their workshop, and changed the spoke.

I only had spokes that were the wrong size, collected on the way. After some time I had the spoke replaced (after getting frustrated several times at my failure at being able to carry out particular actions and seeing my cycling time ticking away).

I went to an all you can eat pizza place to fill up with the fuel that would take me over the tundra wasteland to the next camping ground some 80 km away.

3 km further another spoke broke. I fixed it and continued. At last on my way. The north cape is in sight!

The North Cape in sight.

I passed a sign: the climb to the tundra plains.

Up to the tundra plains

And up I went. At the very top, just before the descent down, another spoke broke.

Yet again: *sigh*

Unlike the others, it was a spoke on the side of the gear wheel. I couldn’t change this one even if I had tried. It was cold and windy and the clouds were looking threatening. I was 20 km out of Alta and 60 km from my planned camping ground: a tiny village with no facilities. In fact, the next bike shop is at Honningsvåg near the north cape or at Hammerfest, some 130 km away. What was I doing here at the start of the arctic tundra? Alone, with my (non-existant) technical prowess and with a wheel clearly past it’s prime. If another spoke broke and the wheel was unusable, what then? I tried to straighten the wheel with one broken spoke by tightening and loosening other spokes. The wheel got worse.

Time to quit while the wheel was still rideable. Dejected, I turned and cycled back to Alta.

Having dinner at the camping ground, I was speaking to two Serbians who have just returned from the north cape. They were early and are now killing four days of time. They had a lot of stories to tell. Some were hilarious: particularly about mosquitos.

But, dear readers, I have a question. Can you help? What should I do?
1. Call around and find a nearby cycle shop with a mechanic. The nearest one may be 100s of kms away. Then rent a car and take the bike to it.
2. Try to rent a bike. I doubt this would be possible.
3. Try to readjust the spokes and cycle the last 250 kms.
4. Buy a new bike. (this is not a really serious option)
5. Something else..

As you can see, I don’t have any options I like. The Serbians told me of another bike shop in Alta that sounds promising. I will try that. Other than that, please help me with your ideas. I could think of nothing worse than cycling all this way and joining a tourist bus trip to go to the north cape from here.

By the way, I asked the last bike shop if they had a replacement wheel. They didn’t but could have one in by Thursday. I guess that would be Friday now. Maybe another one of the shops has a wheel. The gears will need to be mounted which may not be possible without a mechanic..