The trusty steed´s condition at Oruro

I left Oruro one week ago and attempted to leave again today. In between, I cycled south to Pazna on Lago Poopo, where I sheered one of the rear pannier bolts again. I asked a local guy if there was a mechanic in the village and 5 minutes later I was in a yard with a guy with an arc welder, one hour later I was back on the road with the sheered bolt removed and a spare one that I had with me having secured the pannier back on. A very convenient place to have the bad luck.

15-10-2010 The removed bolt with the welded lever on it.

From there it was on to the brewing town of Huari, which brews some of the best beer in Bolivia. I then turned south west to Tambillo, 10 km from where I broke one of the aluminium forks that holds my rear pannier on. I splinted that with an allen key then Duck-taped it up, which did a good on the go repair. Then on towards Salinas De Garci Mendoza, 15km from where I sheered another one of the bolts that holds the pannier on. I Duck-taped that to the bike frame and carried onwards. The clearance between the rear tyre and the pannier was very narrow and on the very bumpy road the tyre rubbed almost continuously. Slow riding was the only way to go.

16-10-2010 The clearance with the rear pannier Duck taped to the bike frame.

I took the bike to the mechanic at Salinas to see if he could do anything with it, ideally remove the snapped bolt and fix the broken fork. He had an arc welder but the electricity supply to the town, which is normally cut off to the town for a few hours in the afternoon, was off for an extended period - no arc welding could be done without electricity. I waited a day to see if the electricity would come back on and late the next evening it did. I got the bolt removed, but he could do nothing for the snapped fork as it was made of Aluminium and he could not weld that. The splint was put back in and I was wondering whether to continue and attempt the 30 bumpy km to the salt flats and the 110km distance across them.

My decision was made for me. Going through the village of Salinas De Garci Mendoza, the pannier fork on the other side snapped too, and the whole pannier lowered itself onto the back tyre. The bike was going no further.

16-10-2010 The snapped pannier fork.

I asked the village mechanic if he could get a spare pannier or could make one, so that I could get back on my way, but he could not do anything to help. I had to find a new pannier and returning to a decent sized town, Oruru I decided, was the only thing to do. I took the bus there and planned to take the bus back to Salinas to continue my cycle once I had a reliable pannier.

The now broken pannier was bought to carry a day pack on the Bike-Dreams tour with my main gear in the truck. It clearly wasn´t up to the job of carrying the whole lot, maybe 30kg at times. What is needed is something more chunky, and made of steel, so that it can be repaired on the go if need be.

At Oruro, there are 20 bike shops on the same street. That´s how Bolivia works. If you want a haircut, then you need to find the street with all the barber shops on it. All the bus windscreens are sold on another street and all the eggs are sold on another. There are shops with nothing but eggs in them, piled as high as the walls and all organised into sizes and priced accordingly. So, I found the bike shop street. The thing about the 20 shops is that they all sell the same thing, so having been to one and found that the pannier did not fit my bike meant that I had pretty much the same conversation in the next 19.

I found a welder in Oruro and asked him if he would cut and fit a pannier to my bike if I bought the chunkiest one in the shop(s). He agreed, and what I have now is one rather impressive steel pannier. We had to fit it on backwards to fit around the disc brake, cut the rear off it so that it would fit behind the seat post, weld a new bar on it to support it after the cut, and make a custom tube and bolt to attach it to frame below the seat. The steel tubing is so thick that my pannier bags hooks do not fit over it, so there is 1cm thick nylon rope attached to the frame which the pannier hooks click into nicely. How long will it last on the bumpiest roads that I´ve ever been on with a pannier? Fingers crossed...

The rest of the bike is holding up quite well thankfully. Two little problems will require some TLC a little later, but not for now. The first one is the rear disc brake. The disc has got a little out of true with the pannier problem having knocked the wheel off. The rear brake rubs slightly, so I´ll replace that when I get a disc. I left a spare one on the Bike-Dreams truck, so I´ll hopefully swap that out in Argentina. The second issue is the small chain ring. Not an issue just yet, but all those up-hills have meant that it´s got an awful lot of use and being the smallest one, it wears the quickest. The teeth are worn to pointed sharks teeth and although the chain is not slipping yet, I recon I´ll need to replace that in Argentina too. I optimistically took a spare middle chain ring with me and not a spare granny ring. Since getting to Bolivia, getting out of granny has been easy. The Altiplano is high but flat, and the middle and big chain rings are getting the most use now. I´ll need to find a decent bike shop in Argentina to replace the granny ring as there are more hills still to come as I go south.

16-10-2010. The sharks teeth on the granny ring