Back in October 2013, I thought my bike was good to go, and felt confident that I could repair just about anything that might go wrong on the road.
I have all the allen wrenches, screwdrivers, chain breakers, spoke tools, spare brake pads, extra chains, and nuts and bolts that I thought I would need for the next few thousand kilometers until major parts started wearing out, but I thought wrong. Although the bike generally is pretty problem-free, there’s always a little pumping, greasing, cleaning, truing, and lots other small tasks to keep her in ship-shape. Then, every once in a while, something big happens, especially if I spend a lot of time riding in the mud, through rivers, or over the Himalayas. It’s very rare, however, that a breakdown makes the bike un-ridable. Repairs can almost always be rigged up with tape, rubber tubing, and glue!
As I’ve stated time and again, cycling is just a great metaphor for life in general, and cycle touring doubly so. I can understand why the new big networking activity among business people is to cycle competitively together. Even for me, how I handle hiccups like the breakdowns detailed below really makes me reflect on how I handle other, more important things in my life, like interpersonal relationships, my finances, time management, etc. When I get that flat, do I sit down right then and there, find the puncture, and repair it, taking up perhaps an hour of my time (and my riding buddies’) and reducing the day’s mileage, or do I quickly swap out for a new tube, and repair the punctured one later? When aging parts begin to wear out, how long do I wait to replace them? At what point can that chain said to be worn out? Is it when the gears skip and the chain doesn’t sit on the cogs properly? Or do I wait until I only have a couple working gears, or even until the chain breaks?
I usually take kind of a middle road, replacing parts before they stop working altogether or start wearing down neighboring parts. I also do a lot of preventative maintenance, and have put a lot of effort into learning how a bike works and how to adjust everything. Other cyclists I know are happy doing no maintenance themselves, and just wait until a bike shop appears when something goes wrong. Others don’t replace parts until their bikes are barely ridable, and still others will replace whole sets of components at the first sign of wear.
This cool dude replaced a couple spokes for me, and trued my rear rim as well. I also picked up a $2 bike pump, as my nice $25 one stopped working after just a few uses. $2 one is way better! Oh and that's Emese's bike there in front, not mine.
Gaurav at The Bike Shop in Delhi hooked me up with a guy who replicated my cracked, broken aluminum front rack in cold, hard STEEL. I was pretty skeptical about how the result would turn out, but it is exactly the same, fits perfectly, and seems super sturdy. Thanks!
And then it’s time to pack up the bike for my short flight from Delhi to Bishkek.
Thanks for the help, little guy.
And bike shop dude.
Here it is, all ready to go! Surely it will survive the trip to the airport and three hour flight to Bishkek, no??
Yes! Mostly anyway. I managed to stuff most of my belongings into the box with the bike. Here it all is exploded all over the driveway at the Nomad’s Home in Bishkek. The airport people told me my bike and bags weigh 60kg combined. That’s 130lbs of crap I am slowly lugging around the world, in addition to my love handles. Anyway, the only things that got broken in transit were my front fender bracket and speedometer bracket. Easily fixed for about $1 each.
Repair #1: The aluminum welds and tubing on my front rack are wearing out! The stress of the panniers bouncing around has cracked the metal in a couple places, and worn holes in the tubing in others. This gentleman helped me out of the kindness of his heart by ingeniously using metal wire to reinforce the cracked areas and then wrapping it all in scrap rubber to hold it in place and keep it from rubbing on the bags. Good as new! I may eventually have to get a new front rack, but this will hold for a while, and everything was free! Thanks dude!
Repair #2: Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the actual breakdown, because it happened on a cold and rainy night, but this was the worst thing that’s happened to the bike yet. Half user error, half elemental stress damage, the incident occurred after I installed a new pair of brake pads on the rear. I knew they weren’t the right kind of pads for my brakes, but I thought I had them securely tightened in place, and that they would hold. At any rate, I needed to put new pads on and that’s all I had! Then, after a couple weeks of jiggling up and down huge mountains in the mud and rain, one of the pad holders came loose without me noticing. The metal part of the pad holder ground a divot in my rear rim, which eventually split and peeled off from the sidewall, popping the tube with a loud BANG as I went down a muddy hill in the rain. This is one of the only things I can’t just rig up on the bike, so I was out of commission for quite a while until we could hitch to the nearest big city, where there was a good bike shop that could order a new rim and re-lace my wheel for me.
Below: The cement truck that let us hitch a bumpy ride back to civilization (Thanks Gyesan! He was our driver, to my left), and the mechanic at Imperial Cycles in Guwahati who relaced my existing hub and spokes onto a new rim. Great job.
Gong at Bok Bok Bike in Bangkok putting the finishing touches on one of my new wheels! I wouldn't have gotten all new wheels, but economically it made sense, since replacing just the worn out parts of my old wheels wouldn't been just as expensive as getting these brand new shiny duds that just happen to use standard parts.
Below right: Ma, the proprietor of Bok Bok, and me, with old and new wheels. Thanks guys!
(Below)The piecemeal repair of my crankset sort of held up until Hanoi, but it was clear that I could either replace the whole crankset and bottom bracket with something that would be repairable in Asia, or try to order the replacement parts for my FSA crankset and hope that it never broke again. I ended up having George at THBC replace the crankset with something basic and cheap that should be repairable by any bike shop pretty much anywhere. Thanks George! Also check out the junkyard fender successfully installed!
I have all the allen wrenches, screwdrivers, chain breakers, spoke tools, spare brake pads, extra chains, and nuts and bolts that I thought I would need for the next few thousand kilometers until major parts started wearing out, but I thought wrong. Although the bike generally is pretty problem-free, there’s always a little pumping, greasing, cleaning, truing, and lots other small tasks to keep her in ship-shape. Then, every once in a while, something big happens, especially if I spend a lot of time riding in the mud, through rivers, or over the Himalayas. It’s very rare, however, that a breakdown makes the bike un-ridable. Repairs can almost always be rigged up with tape, rubber tubing, and glue!
As I’ve stated time and again, cycling is just a great metaphor for life in general, and cycle touring doubly so. I can understand why the new big networking activity among business people is to cycle competitively together. Even for me, how I handle hiccups like the breakdowns detailed below really makes me reflect on how I handle other, more important things in my life, like interpersonal relationships, my finances, time management, etc. When I get that flat, do I sit down right then and there, find the puncture, and repair it, taking up perhaps an hour of my time (and my riding buddies’) and reducing the day’s mileage, or do I quickly swap out for a new tube, and repair the punctured one later? When aging parts begin to wear out, how long do I wait to replace them? At what point can that chain said to be worn out? Is it when the gears skip and the chain doesn’t sit on the cogs properly? Or do I wait until I only have a couple working gears, or even until the chain breaks?
I usually take kind of a middle road, replacing parts before they stop working altogether or start wearing down neighboring parts. I also do a lot of preventative maintenance, and have put a lot of effort into learning how a bike works and how to adjust everything. Other cyclists I know are happy doing no maintenance themselves, and just wait until a bike shop appears when something goes wrong. Others don’t replace parts until their bikes are barely ridable, and still others will replace whole sets of components at the first sign of wear.
Flat tires October, 2013 to Present: | 5 |
Bike Part Replacement Log:
| Date: | Description: | Cost: |
| November, 2013 | New crankset | $80 |
| March, 2014 | *Two new complete wheels | $150 |
| April, 2014 (In Mar/Apr I made a lot of pre-emptive purchases, since I knew I’d be going through Myanmar and India, where terrain is rough and quality components are hard to find.) | *New cassette *Spare cable set *Two new tires (originals kept as spares) *3 spare tubes *New bottom bracket | $120 |
| June, 2014 | Bike shorts | $15 |
| July, 2014 Guwahati, India | *New rear rim (split on the side) *New foam pads under bar tape *New cable lock (lost original ㅠㅠ) *New rear brake pads | $51 |
| November, 2014 Gangtok, India | *New-to-me used chainrings *New chain *New bottom-bracket *Cassette tool and crank-puller *Can of chain lube | $25 $15 $25 $15 $7 |
| January, 2015 Kathmandu, Nepal | *Full cleaning, truing, replaced a bunch of spokes, re-lubed the hub bearings, replaced some cables. | $30 |
| April, 2015 Delhi, India and then Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan June, 2015: Khiva, Uzbekistan | *New front rack hand-made by local metal shop *Bike boxed up for airport! *New cassette *New chain *New front fender *New bracket for speedometer *New pump *Wheel truing *Epoxy | $25 $5 $23 $15 $1 $1 $2 $2 $4 |
Estimated Total Expenditures on the BIKE: | $611 |
Repair Update, July 2015:
Riding along suddenly my front rack came loose! Upon closer inspection, the eyelet where the rack attaches had actually detached from the fork, leaving a gaping hole! With no replacement forks available, I will be riding on this fork for the rest of the trip, with the rack just hose-clamped to the fork. Safety first!
Repair Update, June 2015:
At some point in the middle of the desert, my front derailleur stopped clicking, and I was stuck on the middle ring. I thought, "oh crap, I bet the shifter is broken." But fortunately, after taking the whole thing apart, it turned out just to be the cable housing had ripped right inside the shifting mechanism. Anyway, I had a spare cable and housing, purchased in Thailand before setting off across the great unknown. Fixed it all by myself, and cleaned and lubed the shifter while I was at it. Good as new!
I also picked up four tubes of epoxy and some plastic rope (literally picked up off the ground), and used it to lash/weld my rear rack back together in three or four different places. So far it's holding up quite well. I think now the only things that haven't broken on my bike are the frame, and the handlebars. Knock on wood.
Repair Update, April 2015:
Gaurav at The Bike Shop in Delhi hooked me up with a guy who replicated my cracked, broken aluminum front rack in cold, hard STEEL. I was pretty skeptical about how the result would turn out, but it is exactly the same, fits perfectly, and seems super sturdy. Thanks!
And then it’s time to pack up the bike for my short flight from Delhi to Bishkek.
Thanks for the help, little guy.
And bike shop dude.
Here it is, all ready to go! Surely it will survive the trip to the airport and three hour flight to Bishkek, no??
Yes! Mostly anyway. I managed to stuff most of my belongings into the box with the bike. Here it all is exploded all over the driveway at the Nomad’s Home in Bishkek. The airport people told me my bike and bags weigh 60kg combined. That’s 130lbs of crap I am slowly lugging around the world, in addition to my love handles. Anyway, the only things that got broken in transit were my front fender bracket and speedometer bracket. Easily fixed for about $1 each.
Repair Update, January, 2015:
Thanks to the guys at the Hare Krishna Bike Shop in Kathmandu! These guys worked some serious magic on my bike. Now everything is straight, smooth, silent, and ready to go for a few thousand more km. And plus I got to be proselytized to, always love that!
Repair Update, July 2014:
Repair #1: The aluminum welds and tubing on my front rack are wearing out! The stress of the panniers bouncing around has cracked the metal in a couple places, and worn holes in the tubing in others. This gentleman helped me out of the kindness of his heart by ingeniously using metal wire to reinforce the cracked areas and then wrapping it all in scrap rubber to hold it in place and keep it from rubbing on the bags. Good as new! I may eventually have to get a new front rack, but this will hold for a while, and everything was free! Thanks dude!
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Repair #2: Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the actual breakdown, because it happened on a cold and rainy night, but this was the worst thing that’s happened to the bike yet. Half user error, half elemental stress damage, the incident occurred after I installed a new pair of brake pads on the rear. I knew they weren’t the right kind of pads for my brakes, but I thought I had them securely tightened in place, and that they would hold. At any rate, I needed to put new pads on and that’s all I had! Then, after a couple weeks of jiggling up and down huge mountains in the mud and rain, one of the pad holders came loose without me noticing. The metal part of the pad holder ground a divot in my rear rim, which eventually split and peeled off from the sidewall, popping the tube with a loud BANG as I went down a muddy hill in the rain. This is one of the only things I can’t just rig up on the bike, so I was out of commission for quite a while until we could hitch to the nearest big city, where there was a good bike shop that could order a new rim and re-lace my wheel for me.
Below: The cement truck that let us hitch a bumpy ride back to civilization (Thanks Gyesan! He was our driver, to my left), and the mechanic at Imperial Cycles in Guwahati who relaced my existing hub and spokes onto a new rim. Great job.
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Repair Update, March 2014:
Below left:Gong at Bok Bok Bike in Bangkok putting the finishing touches on one of my new wheels! I wouldn't have gotten all new wheels, but economically it made sense, since replacing just the worn out parts of my old wheels wouldn't been just as expensive as getting these brand new shiny duds that just happen to use standard parts.
Below right: Ma, the proprietor of Bok Bok, and me, with old and new wheels. Thanks guys!
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Repair Update, December 2013:
My bottle cage fell off. Luckily Mike gave me one from his bike! (He has two extras…One that holds a sculpture of an old bearded man made from bamboo root, and one that does nothing.)
Repair Update November, 2013:
Below: Score! This gentleman at a junkyard pulls a used fender off an old rusty bike and sells it to me for a dollar! No more mud on my back, tent, legs, crank, water bottle, etc...
(Below)The piecemeal repair of my crankset sort of held up until Hanoi, but it was clear that I could either replace the whole crankset and bottom bracket with something that would be repairable in Asia, or try to order the replacement parts for my FSA crankset and hope that it never broke again. I ended up having George at THBC replace the crankset with something basic and cheap that should be repairable by any bike shop pretty much anywhere. Thanks George! Also check out the junkyard fender successfully installed!
Repair Update October 2013:
This kind gentleman in Luang Prabang tried to fix my bottom bracket. The plastic bearing cover that sits between the bearings and the crank axle had cracked on one side, causing the axle to wobble while pedaling. This guy put it all back together using some glue and tape, and it has held for a while, but not a permanent solution.
