They Rode West: Madcap

Whew. What a day. Let's get into it. We split ways with Chris this morning and the rider count slipped to three. We originally had planned for a tour of seven. We had gone off route to go to Golconda and Chris decided he'd rather take an alternate path and not back track to the Adventure Cycling route. We've had a number of mishaps when straying from the route so the vote was in to go the four or five miles back to the map. There was some strain about riding style and other issues so it wasn't so bad to part ways. We'll probably cross paths with Chris again though. You either meet or get word of the people who are going across in the same timeframe as you.

We took a stop at an elementary school for something to eat and then went in search of a drinking fountain. I found one first but the thing had a crack in the metal and put out about an eight foot horizontal spray. There was a hell of a lot more water hitting you than dribbling out of the head of the fountain. Luckily, there was a spigot on the other side of the brick pedestal. Jeremy was around the corner while all of this played out so I let him get sprayed, then disappointed there would be no water, before showing him the spigot to actually fill a bottle. Then Jeremy and I both cracked up as Jordan went through the same routine. There was a map of the United States painted on the playground blacktop and we took a few pictures of our progress thus far.

The heat persisted another day. We seemed to have escaped the rain for now. It was so hot though that the slurry seal patched on the roads had started to melt and our tires left tracks behind us. We stopped and had lunch in Goreville, which was a wonderful answer to the waste of the time the day before. Our waitress was really nice and the place was cooled and best of all, they give cyclists free pie. We had our picture taken outside the restaurant – Delaney's on Broadway – and rode on.

We've been in the roller coasters for a while now. Climb up a short hill, descend down another, pedal furiously to try and get up the next one, get about halfway and slug it up again. You climb your current hill, shimmering water mirage at the top, desperately hoping for a break and then you see the next one. But we are invincible, or slightly short, so we kept riding. It was only about 66 miles into Carbondale and we arrived around four. It was awesome. Carbondale has a population around twenty thousand and we felt like were in the Big Apple. Buildings taller than two stories? What witchcraft is this? The three bike shops in town are within a block of each other, and we visited them all. Adam had been doing business with a shop called the Bike Surgeon and we were told he'd be back shortly.

I asked if we could put up Jeremy's wheel in the truing stand to have a look and the mechanic working at the time, Mike, said sure. I had been dreaming of access to a truing stand. We flipped Jeremy's bike upside down and were having a lot of trouble removing the rear wheel. Well, we got it out and muchas problemas. His axle was broken. But worse than that, we discovered a crack in the dropout, the portion of the frame that supports the axle and rear wheel. Now it was crisis mode. Another guy named John who worked at the shop showed up and we started to discuss strategy. There was talk of buying a new frame, or a totally new bicycle, or looking through the used market in the local area. I asked John if there were any frame builders locally and he called up a friend of his, John Medwedeff, a blacksmith, metal worker, and sculptor. He agreed to have a look and we said: alright, we've got a plan. This was all while John was scrambling to make a train departure, helping us nonetheless.

Then it was a question of getting the bike to him. Mike offered a kid's bike trailer that was outside his house a mile or two away. Jordan offered to go along with me so we both went to a restaurant called Fatty Patty's for veggie burgers. It was another nine miles to Murphysboro after a full day of riding. The burgers were excellent. I rode and picked up the trailer, attached it to my bicycle, went back to the bike shop, we loaded and strapped the bike down (sans wheels), and Jordan and I set off to John's shop. We got lost at one point and showed up at a youth detention center but got back on track and arrived at John's studio.

It was not a good situation to be dealing with a broken frame but it was an experience and a pleasure to see John's shop. He has drill presses from the 1930's and lathes from the 1920's and tools to roll wagon wheels from the 1800's. We looked at photos from his portfolio and were blown away. John does commissions for public arts projects and the work is incredible. If anybody was going to do anything for this bike, this was the guy. You can check out his website here. John welded the frame and reinforced the joint with another piece of metal. It was great to see his work. And then, if that wasn't enough, he gave us a ride back to Carbondale with all of our gear and gave us an extremely generous price on the repair. Thank you John. You've let us continue the ride.

At this point Jordan and I were pretty hungry and we went to a pizza place where Jeremy treated for having helped with the frame. We were finished around 11 PM and dropped off the trailer. The excitement was not yet over.