Sandpoint Beach Party

(Brice)

Despite my rear wheel being flat again when we woke up yesterday morning, we made it in to Sandpoint, land of surprisingly warm temperatures, beaches, and bike shops. We found new tires easily, and got Susan some spiffy new cycling shoes as well (the old ones had chronic problems with the cleat not staying in place basically due to poor design), but the issue with my rear wheel proved less tractable.

The consensus is that the freehub body of my rear wheel is on it’s way to broken (the freehub is the nifty thing that lets the rear wheel move independently from the cassette/chain/pedals in one direction – you can’t coast without it), and it turned out that bike shops in Idaho don’t carry freehub bodies for a 7 year old wheel that uses a nonstandard type of hub. Further investigation determined that in fact bike shops everywhere don’t carry the part I need… there might be one on eBay, but it wasn’t going to make it to Idaho any time soon. This is my punishment for getting slightly fancy wheels. A quick consultation with my on-call bike mechanic friend Reid established that that attempting to take apart the hub, figure out what was rubbing, fix it, and put it back together was a Bad Idea. Which means that I get a new back wheel for my birthday! The shop was able to get the necessary parts overnighted and the mechanic should be building the wheel as I type this.

Sandpoint is a really nice town and we didn’t have birthday plans other than going on a bike ride so we decided to hang out on the beach and have a nice dinner. It’s really surreal to go from being in bike mode to sitting on a patio in 80 degree sun in front of a really nice lake watching sailboats go by and drinking a Manny’s. I also ate a tasty trout. We slept in this morning, the wheel should be ready by 2, and our plan is to try to ride the 35 miles to Washington before dinner. Not a bad birthday at all!

We only took a few pictures, but here’s a shot of lake Pend Oreille (or Ponderay depending on whose spelling you trust):

Here’s what a dollar looks like after it holds your tube in place for 120 miles:

And finally a lousy selfshot at the beach: