¿Como se dice busted rim?

So, ideally when you´re biking the best place to break down would be in front of a bikeshop, or maybe just close to a town. Or, maybe even just on a road that sees some traffic. A less than ideal place for your bike to fail catastrophically would be the more remote sections of the Careterra Austral, a few hundred Km from anywhere. Unless you are really lucky and happen to be a creative bike mechanic.

We left Coyhaique about a week ago after a wonderful visit with some folks at the NOLS Patagonia branch. A few days out from Coyhaique, first thing in the morning, Ty´s rear rim failed at the top a pass. Being a few hundred kilometers from the closest town with a bike shop where we could potentially buy a new rim, we got to wondering exactly how far a person can ride on a broken rim, with a disconnected rear brake, over bikeeating washboard gravel roads. Visions of waiting days for somone to stop and pick up two fools trying to hitch with loaded bikes ran through our heads. We contemplated the complexities of trying to make cheese out of milky glacial river water and looked on sorrowfully at our ever-diminishing cooky supply. We shuddered at the visions. So, Ty put some duct tape over the rupture, we ate our second of three breakfasts, and crossed our fingers. The tire held all that day and most of the next as we rode through valleys with milky glacial rivers flowing through them, and rocky mountains with cascading waterfalls. We stopped waiting expectantly for the creaking sound of the semicircular rim morpheing suddenly into an exact oval. And Ty made an art form of descending mountains with only a front brake.

But, to our dismay the rim blew again just a day´s ride from Cochrane, where some bikers we passed heading north assured us rims were available. Ty went to work again with the duct tape and superglue and (in honor of Wyclef) many many many many tire patches. We held our breath all the way to Cochrane (okay, maybe we took a couple of breaths on some of the passes) and made it! We rolled into town last night in time to take part in Cochrane´s 54th town anniversary celebration. We feasted on empanadas, Concho y Toro boxed red wine, and enjoyed the company of some very toothless, very drunk gauchos. Today we´re enjoying the beautiful fall weather after a couple days of heavy rain, and filling up on the apples, plums and pears growing in our campground. And Ty´s buying a new rim as I write this. Turns out you can ride at least a few hundred kilometers with a loaded bike on a broken rim. ¡Que suerte!

We send our love,

Rose