Day 247 | Midway through my time in Alice: a working bike but more replacement bits required
The saga of the rear hub came to an end, seems the SLX hub is an endangered species in Australia, or for that matter across the world, none of the internet suppliers appeared to have them in stock, eventually a rep went into a Sydney bikeshop knowing they had a few up their sleeve and reacquired one. There was no particular urgency for me fortunately, 5 weeks to install might seem excessive, but it’s all done and the XT even seems to be in full working order after the liberal application of grease, now gotta useful spare.
We’ve now moved on to the Wiggle delivery saga, none of my three ordered packages has been delivered, 3 weeks on I’m giving up hope. In Perth they arrived in 4 days. Maybe the delivery agent thought they were a package of vibrators and purloined them for an unsatisfied lover.
A flurry of love interest here, beyond my tendency to be an outrageous flirt, I emerged from under a rock, but the female of the species can be a fickle lot, everything was perfect so there must be a problem. Not sure if we are paused at a semi-colon, with a long list of fun about to continue, a colon, slight pause followed by more only slightly different or the complete full stop. Accusations of me being overly romantic, now that’s a first.
So instead of a languid, loving, lie in on a Sunday morning I’m already at Simpsons Gap, out tracing the sensual, sinusoidal curves of the fabulous bike track, gusty wind behind, then a circuit, partly sheltered from the wind until I received the full blast as the wind funnelled through Honeymoon Gap, plain sailing for the remainder of the 60km round trip.
That was the first decent trundle for almost 2 months, the replacement cassette and middle ring having evaporated on their transition from Wiggle to Alice, so my occasionally jumping chain keeps me ever alert.
I’m now past my halfway point in this Alice sojourn, currently flooding in parts of Queensland. That gives major incentive to maintain The Plan and continue stashing the dosh for the next couple of months.
So no, I haven’t been snatched up by a gal who has found out the answer to that perennial question where all the good blokes are: seems we’re all out there riding bikes.