Bang! Then Adi's Back Wheel was History.

Day 58 & 59.

Cycling through Vermont is a pleasant experience. The roads are quiet and the shoulder good. But most importantly the scenery is good. Historic towns and rich farm lands. By lunch time we had reached the capital of Vermont. Another lovely little town and full of great places I thought for a bagel or two with my coffee. We cycled past all the down town trendy cafes and finally stopped into a bagel and sandwich place on the eastern side of town.

Vermont has Choice Cycling.

Dark clouds formed overhead and while we enjoyed cream cheese bagels it poured down outside. I had been told that Vermont was full of interesting people and so I wasn’t totally surprised to overhear two seemingly normal guys at the table nearby talking about the concept of producing robots with human like intelligence. In fact the guts of the conversation was about planting your own mind into a robot so that you could live forever. They then started going on about their star signs and other out of this world mumbo jumbo in complete seriousness.

While this was going on an odd looking fellow started playing on the piano at high volume and the woman at the opposite table began berating her daughter who looked more like her sister, for spilling her drink all over the table and floor.

Piano man then stopped playing and started talking to some strangers, who had just come in, about how he had got a calling at home to contact certain individuals. But the interesting thing for him seemed to be that the message he received had not come via the internet but by some means of telekinesis.

The rain had stopped by this stage and starting to fear that I was losing my own mind I suggested to Adi that we leave.

It stayed fine for about an hour and then it poured again. Two hours later it was easing of but we were soaked.

The Courier has Turned up with Adi's New Wheel.

With only about a week and a half to go before we get to Halifax I thought that we had the Across Canada thing pretty well sewn up. Things however have suddenly got a bit challenging for both of us. The first challenge presented itself last night when doodling on the internet I decided to check out our ferry across the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. The ferry it seems was cancelled a couple of years ago by the Nova Scotia authorities in order to save money. Nova Scotia is somewhat insolvent it seems. Anyway this revelation had Adi frantically re plotting our route so that we could still make Halifax for our flight.

Proud of ourselves for catching this potential disaster and sorting it out quickly with a few longer days and another ferry crossing higher up the bay, we were then thrown another curve ball today as Adi started down a hill only to have her rear rim part company from itself and the tyre then to blow out with a bang. I was ahead at the time and having been notified by a motorist that Adi was in trouble, I cycled back up the hill to find the damage un repairable.

Adi gratuitously accepted a lift to the next town where we got a motel and I had my night of trying to figure out how to proceed from here. In the end the next day I got on my bike and cycled the 35kms to the nearest bike shop where I bought a new rear wheel/ cluster and chain. A quick chat to the mechanics at the shop and then I cycled back to Adi , put the whole thing together outside the local McDonalds and then we both cycled back east to Littleton, New Hampshire again.

Time at Camp to Save the Old Hub and Spokes.

A nice 100km day for me and a challenge along the way. Adi’s bike is once again running smoothly and in the time she had sitting around she has re-gigged  the route again so that we make the plane and do not have to spend the rest of our lives in Nova Scotia. (Once we finally get there.)

Tomorrow we continue to head towards the coast and cross the White Mountains in lovely New Hampshire.