break for christmas

thud, thud, thud, thud, thud..
Hmm, I thought. That's a new noise i haven't heard from the bike before.
I had a quick look at the front at back wheels but couldn't see anything immediately wrong.
I slowly edged forward again.

thud, thud, thud, thud, thud. thwack, tssss..
Hmm I thought. That sounds a bit worse.

Checking again i could now see a split in the rim of the back wheel which was also punctured, in fact the back wheel would no longer turn at all.
This wasn't good. I was about 10km from the next town of Mondejar and amongst all the spares i had brought i certainly hadn't brought a spare wheel.

What to do? Obviously i couldn't wheel the bike anywhere and the prospect of carrying both the bike and my bags wasn't a goer either.

My right thumb seemed to hold the key. I held it out and pointed it to the sky.

30 minutes passed and no joy. Admittedly I wasn´t the most attractive looking prospect, covered in oil with my broken bike and various bags - I had already started to think of hiding my bike somewhere and setting off on foot.

And then, out of nowhere, my knight in shining armour appeared over the horizon.
Perhaps not the traditional image of a knight in his ford transit and slightly blood spattered white coat but it seemed not to matter under the circumstances.

"What´s up" he said.
I showed him my wheel and explained my predicament.
"I´d like to help, but my van´s full of meat. I´ve just come from the slaughterhouse"

A weak excuse i thought. I persuaded him to open the back door suggesting that my injured bike was not so dissimilar to the carcasses he was already carrying and no, i really didn´t mind getting blood on my bike´s paintwork.

It seemed to work. Minutes later we had pushed the various animals towards the front of the van and my bike was nestled in alongside them.
We were soon on our way and within half an hour he had dropped me at the local mechanic´s in Mondejar.

A quick chat with the mechanics and they told me to come back at four when their bike specialist would be on hand.
What luck i thought. He´ll probably be able to sort me out with a new wheel by the morning and I´ll still be on track to make it to my Mum´s place in Alicante for Christmas eve.

Sadly, it was not to be. Returning later it seemed the bike mechanic had never seen a bike with so many gears and certainly didn´t have any new wheels i could have. Apparently i should go to Madrid the next day where they had a biggest and best bike shop and he was sure they could help me out.

Catching the bus, I arrived in Madrid the next morning still hopeful.
It soon became obvious however that they couldn´t help me out in the kind of timeframe i was hoping for. "We can´t do anything until next week", they said in a slightly dismissive tone.
I´m not entirely sure i believed them but gradually i seemed to be coming round to the idea that they might be doing me a favour and i should listen to series of subtle messages telling me it wasn´t to be.

I´m a bit sad but really it´s a good thing. My bike rim had worn through from all the braking i have been doing coming down those hills and it´s more than likely that the front one is about to go too.
A bit more research on my achilles problem has also revealed that i should really rest it for a while if it´s not to be damaged permanently.
So that´s what i´m doing. I´ve managed to transport the bike and me to my Mum´s house where i´m now resting (stocking!) up over the christmas period.
I´ve also ordered some new, stronger wheels from the UK which Lisa is very kindly bringing out for me when she somes to visit next week.

I´ll get on the bike again just after the new year. Time to brush up on some arabic before i reach North Africa...

اجمل التهاني بمناسبة الميلاد و حلول السنة الجديدة