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Low-pain Threshold I strapped Sharon's rim to my rear rack and pedaled back to the bike shop while Sharon stayed in camp. The rim hadn't arrived yet. At ten, a car stopped in the middle of the narrow street and unloaded a bike and two rims. The shop owner showed me the rim. It was a solid bolt axle, not a quick release. I assumed he would change it to the quick release. He disappeared into the shop while I waited on the steps. He came back and motioned for me to come with him. He couldn't remove Sharon's old cluster. He didn't have the right size tool to remove it. (When I was going to buy the $12 tool in Ireland the guy hissed, "I wouldn't buy one, every bike shop will have one." Sure. Except this one. The mechanic pulled out all the stops in his international phrases. "Ce la vie," he shrugged. He presented another cluster to me, but it had only twenty-eight teeth for the lowest gear--the same as the one we sent home after buying the thirty-two tooth in Ireland to relieve Sharon's aching back. He shrugged. What could I do? I decided to buy the twenty-eight and we could hopefully find a shop to remove the thirty-two cluster somewhere. One hundred forty-three Deutsche marks later (including fifteen for labor of threading on the new cluster, tube and tire.), I strapped both rims to my bike and headed back. Sharon saw her new rim. Instead of gushing loving appreciation for my accomplishment, she was a glum-chum instead. No quick release. Not a Schrader tube. Twenty-eight tooth clusters. The new tire was one of those phony tread like my Holland tire. Woe was me. After some convincing Sharon installed it, first taking off the new tire and putting on her old one, in the process finding the installed Presta tube was an eighteen millimeter--the tire was a thirty-five. We packed up. On the first hill Sharon discovered her rear derailleur would not shift onto the large sprocket. Amidst a swarm of yellow jackets, we adjusted the derailleur to its limit. It still wouldn't change onto the large gear. Sharon wanted to return the whole caboodle, take our money back and hop the train to Pirna to negotiate at a real bike shop what she wanted. At the shop Sharon indicated the setup didn't work. She told the mechanic we wanted our money back. The mechanic took the rim into the shop, removed the axle, cut off a scientifically calculated amount (he eyeballed it) and put it back together. Sharon exchanged the Continental tire for a made in Czechoslovakia knobby. Four-thirty, off we went. Retracing our route to Konigstein amid rush hour traffic we turned south through town and were soon beside a refreshing clear brook. At a sign with a red circle on a white background, we stopped to reconnoiter. I found a level spot above the creek, entailing a stiff uphill push through the brambles, to what Sharon disaffectionately referred to as "the tick farm." A few wood ticks were crawling around. Later, I found one embedded in my ankle. After it made no response to being soaked in benzine, Sharon jabbed it out with the needle, causing excruciating agony to my low-pain threshold. Wasn't camping fun?In the morning, Sharon found one embedded in her forearm. I gleefully gouged it out in retribution for last night's bloody massacre. We decided a visit to the Czech Republic wasn't in the cards and abandoned our attempts to enter. We probably wouldn't have found Arran and Rebecca now anyway. We struck the work "Czech" from our vocabulary and now used "enquire" instead. It was cold and windy and felt more like the start of winter than the end of summer. We followed the road along the Enquire border. This meant a series of steep hills, as the dividing line between the two countries was a range of mountains. Sharon struggled up one long hill signed as fourteen percent. We stopped at the top and looked back down. The sign at the top showed fifteen percent going down. Good thing we had come up, we mused--it was a percent less. We ate in our fanciest bus shelter yet: glass windows and two window flower boxes filled with blooming red geraniums. It was warmer out of the wind. Cycling along a dipping forest road a few drops of rain began to fall. A cross-country ski hut provided shelter. We were out of water and it was almost time to camp. Outside the shelter, we set our assortment of pots, pans, bowls, cups and ice cream pails on the ground to collect rainwater. When the rain stopped, I poured all the collected water into the cup. It amounted to a grand total of one-quarter cup. Amazing how we always became so wet from so little water. We left to find water. A map on the Teich-haus shelter wall depicted a stream beside another hut two kilometers away. This 2690 kilometer cross-country trail went all the way to Budapest. In two kilometers, beside a stream, we found a covered picnic table but no hut. We cooked spicy sausages for supper. They didn't make them like that back home. In the foggy gloom we set up the tent behind the table. |
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