Sunday April 15th
I had decided to take a bike ride in the mountains, now that the boat was against the dock that would be pretty easy.
Since there was still plenty of warm water left (after motoring into the wind last night) I decided to put that to use and avoid building up a large backlog of laundry. So, I spent the morning washing clothes in the kitchen sinks (finally a time where having a double kitchen sink comes in handy). When I was all done I hung things to dry on the life line around the boat. Ran out of clothespins. And also learned why clothespins on a boat should be made of plastic: the wooden ones have a metal spring that does not stand the salt water very well.
I left for my bike ride one, temperature was mild with a very slight drizzle every now and then. Took the road into the hills/mountains, and it soon started to become a nice winding path with short steep climbs. Was wishing I had installed a 27 cog on my cassette (when I got back on the boat I checked, and actually there was a 27 on it, those hills were pretty steep).
The views were nice, all green around me and very few houses. Almost no traffic to speak of. Came through an old mining town, looked like the mines had been abandoned (I think I had read that they used to mine for gold and copper around here). After about two hours I came into a little town (whose name I have forgotten) and made a little stop. I was actually hoping to be able to make sort of a loop, but when I asked for the road to Santa Lucia they pointed to where I came from, so back to where I came from. It was a Sunday afternoon, and most people were gathering on what was maybe the central square (well, it wasn’t that much of a square, but it was where the road was winding a little). There was some loud music and people were just sitting and standing around waiting for nothing to happen. Bought a drink in the local cafeteria and headed back the way I came.
On the way back I was going to be descending more than climbing (one of the advantages of starting at sea level). On one of the longer descends I was trying to shift into the big ring, but it would not go (later I realized that the derailler cable must have slipped a little, after I oiled most contact points to prevent things from rusting). So I am messing with that, looking down. And bang! Hit a pot hole real hard, my rear tire was flat immediately (no hissing, went flat with the bang). Stopped on the side of the road and examined the damage: big bump on the rear rim, tire with two holes, and my handlebar had rotated completely forward (I had my hands on top of the brakes, my thumbs took most of the hit and hurt for the next two days). So I get ready to replace the tube. Well, turns out that my spare tube (the only one I brought!) has a short stem (my wheels are deep rim Rolf Vector’s): the top of it barely came out of the rim. I was only able to get about 2 bar of air in there. After putting the handle bars back in place I continued, listening to the noise of a remote thunder. I was about 35km or so away from the boat, looked like there was no chance I was going to make it back dry (which also meant that my drying laundry was going to get all soaked). 10km later my right crank was coming loose, and of course the allen tool that fits on the is missing from my multi purpose portable toolkit (loaned it to someone and it never came back). It also sounded like my cassette was loose (I had been listening to this rattle for a while now, but with all the shifting in the hills I finally figured out that this rattle was dependent on which block of cogs I was on). So I was going to be limping back in town, but not before the deluge came down on my. Visibility became less than 50 meters at times. And with all the water on the road no way of telling where the pot holes were at. The rain eased of when I was about 2km from town, and by the time I was back at the boat it was dry again, though the sky looked like there was more to come.