Day 6
Inyokern.
Another warm day in the desert.
Breakfast consisted of corn flakes with milk that I have eaten at the table not far from the store. Before bike shop was going to open – at 11, I had to spend few hours some how.
I rode around looking at the town, visited post office and set at the tables near the gas station, where locals regularly meet to have fun. Mostly retired people gathered with their morning coffees.
After they asked general questions
about my journey, I asked them about the local snakes and spiders, in return.
They started telling “surprising” stories such as finding an “extra large”
scorpion or spider in their houses. Now they were mostly amusing each other and
stopped noticing me. I had a feeling that they really exaggerated about the
sizes of the things they encountered. J
A little later, a local official showed
up at the table. He was dressed accordingly – in a suit with a tie, even though
it was pretty hot.
People asked him about the status of
their wish to build a community center, and official person (I believe it was a
Mayor), done just what was so natural of him – said that they are working on it
and promised the center to be built soon. After he left, people discontentedly
talked about him promising it already for a long time and not seeing any
change.
Finally it was time to ride to the bike
shop and see what can be done about the knock in the rear axle, or at least so
I thought.
The owner of the shop was very nice,
but he was busy with something locally and wasn’t going to be in the store that
day.
He briefly asked me what I was doing
and what I needed. He then asked another nice gentleman Ken, to take a look at
the bike and not charge me the labor, only the parts if they will be needed. He
then left.
Meanwhile Erick arrived with his bike
and took a part in a conversation with Ken.
At that time, there was another
customer and I waited until they left.
Ken appeared to be an interesting, nice
man of around 60 years old. First about 15- 20 minutes we just talked about
cycling in general and particularly – Lance Armstrong. Ken knew many details
about Armstrong and the way professional racing is organized, which I was very
curious to learn. He was talking about strategies used in Armstrong’s team to
use strong cyclists as “wind breakers” in front of him, which greatly
contributes to the race outcome.
Ken is a bicycle enthusiast working in
the shop part time and replacing the owner when he is away.
I took the wheel off and Ken started
looking at the axle. After removing the free-wheel and taking the axle out of
the hub, it showed to be still well lubricated. Balls seemed fine and shiny,
but the race tracks, however, had a lot of rough surface. Turned they were not
replaced while rebuilding the axle.
After finding the right size bearing
races and putting new seat of bearing balls, Ken put the axle together.
Then started a very
long process of adjusting the clearance. Nut, that is responsible for adjusting
was really sensitive to very little turning. Slight turn in clock-wise
direction, would make it too tight, while turning it opposite way would
suddenly make it too loose. We both spent much time trying to find the
compromise and finally I decided to live it a little too loose, than too tight.
Now I am thinking that the hubs themselves were not perfect anymore, and
required new set of bearings to break in.
When paying for the bearing and races I
wanted to still leave some money for the work, Ken refused to take them. So it
only cost me about 3 or 4 dollars.
We put the wheel back on the bike, that
was laying up side down outside and I rode around the block. There was no more
knock and I was really glad.
About one more hour we talked in front
of the shop with Erick and Ken. Meanwhile a man that participated in morning
coffee conversations at tables near the gas station, showed up and opened a
shop next door. He was a barber.
As I had a long hair by that time which
didn’t feel nice under the helmet, I went to the shop and got a haircut.
At
Two hours I spent writing the notes for
this journal in a nice, shady gazebo, in a local park. It’s actually a pride of
the whole town, as I already heard several times people mentioning it as the
only place in town that has grass.
I met Erick at 5 and we rode to
We stopped at Mc Donald’s to take
advantage of the good deals on ice-cream cones and cold drinks. Then Erick
showed me a huge Dollar store where I got the sunscreen and different kinds of
cookies.
When we were walking out of the store,
Jerry was passing by and stopped to talk a bit. He is a guy that makes a living
by collecting empty bottles and recycling them. He said that he already has a
cheap place to live and this pays his little expenses.
After that we stopped at a grocery
store where I got some fruits for the next day and when we started riding back
to Inyokern, it was already dark.
Somewhere in the middle of the way, I
heard a buzzing noise and rode a foot from the white snake lying on the
asphalt. We stopped the bikes and went back to look at it, but the snake was
already on its way back to the rock field. I was pretty amazed, first time I
heard a real rattle snake and saw its gracious movement.
After arriving to Inyokern, I said good bye Erick and soon after pitched the tent at the same place as last night – at the parking lot among old cars.
The bad thing was that I was hearing the knock again. It wasn’t as loud as before, but now I was sure it wasn’t the axle. For some instances I was suspicious of the pedal cage. Time will show.
0 miles progress today, ~ 25 riding
around.
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