The Blue-Arse State

Day 64

Harrodsburg, KY to Berea, KY (via Danville)

Distance: 48 miles

Steed (of Austin): the six million dollar bike – we can rebuild him

Alcohol units consumed: zero (really)

Today was a day unlike any other on the trip. All of the usual routines went out the window as I found myself with a number of pressing tasks to complete on a cycling day. Albeit a blissfully short one. 

Before breakfast, I switched my UK phone on for the first time in weeks. I had been trying to charge it after the battery went dead, and then download some app updates that I needed to complete some admin from home. Finally, leaving it to whirr away as I chomped away on some perfectly cooked eggs and batter pancakes, and after some persistence and pandering to its foibles, the task was complete.

I also found myself having no clean cycling clothes to wear and decided to break with tradition and stop at the laundromat that I had seen in town rather than try to find one at the other end. Putting on yesterday’s gear to cycle there, I did a quick change (in the restroom rather than the “Grapevine” method) to get as many things through the wash as possible.

While I was watching my cheery bright cycling tops dancing around the drier, I phoned the bike shop in Berea to find out if they could look at Skippy, the magic jumping chain, for me. They answered but told me the bike shop had closed down. Good job I called!

Calling the bike shop in Danville, around 10 miles off the route, I found that they were more than happy to fix things for me, even giving me perfect directions for a fantastic route on the back-roads to get to them from Harrodsburg.

I was greeted like an old friend by father and son team Ernst and Andrew. And as Ernst got to work on Steed with the precision of a surgeon and the enthusiasm of a thoroughbred waiting for the starting gate to open, I chatted to Andrew and then Chris, who had been out on the lunch-run, and realised I was pretty hungry myself.

Wandering out onto Main Street, I found Danville to be another beautiful and historic town. This part of Kentucky is steeped in history with some of the earliest settlements in the area by the “white man” – Harrodsburg, where I’d left from that morning was the earliest, named after an Englishman called James Harrod who settled it in the late 1700s.

Danville itself is a cute college town, with a prestigious history around presidential debates and other claims to fame. And being a college town, of course it had a fantastic little coffee house where I was able to grab a proper latte and a great sandwich, which I took back to the bike shop to check on progress.

The problem, it seemed, was not with the chain alone, but with the fact that the old chain and sprockets had become so friendly with each other over the last several thousand miles that they had started to shape each other into a unique fit – slotting into the grooves in the touching surfaces. Putting the new chain on the old sprockets meant that it couldn’t get proper purchase on the sprocket teeth, so was slipping and skipping.

As Ernst explained all this to me, it seemed extremely familiar and I realised that I knew this already. You had two options, either to change a chain so regularly that it never gets a chance to meld with the sprockets. Or leave the chain on as long as possible and be prepared to change the sprockets when you change the chain. Anything in between, as I found, was asking for trouble. But in my hung-over state in Louisville, I had failed to have this discussion with the bike shop there, and they had failed to mention it. And now I no longer had the old chain, I had no option but to change the sprockets.

But that wasn’t the only thing. As Ernst looked at the gear cables, he also found they were rusted in places which was affecting the ease of shifting, and so he replaced those too.

All in all, I guess I had gradually been getting used to Steed’s little ways and compensating for them, not worrying when the gears didn’t change properly first time and playing the shifters as necessary.

But no more… it was time for the rebuilding of Steed.

Ernst adjusted, and tested, and fine-tuned and tested, and once Steed was ready for me to take for a spin round the parking lot, I already suspected that his moves were now going to be like silk, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Having had an entertaining and pleasant afternoon in the company of the guys, and being extremely chuffed to have a revamped Steed purring away contentedly, I took a quick snap of them before I left around mid-afternoon to start my to ride to Berea, my destination for the day. I’m not sure how we managed to get onto the idea of the monkeys, but it did make us all laugh…

Chris, Ernst and Andrew: Yes We Can-Ville

Arriving in Berea, I found another stunning historic centre in the heart of a thriving college town, and was cock-a-hoop that I was staying in the historic hotel right in the middle of it. The food in the hotel restaurant was fantastic fine dining but, sadly, since Berea is a “dry” town, without alcohol.

Actually, I say it is “dry” but apparently a couple of years ago, the town voted to allow alcohol, it’s just that nobody has applied for a liquor licence. Really people?

Still, my liver has been dreaming about landing in a dry county for weeks, so at least part of me was happy!

Me x