Thanks to the Ladies! (Funny Story(we let the boys down))

[Waleki]

I just want to thank the ladies who helped us out today, without them we would not have had one of the funniest rides I have ever been on.

 

So I wanted to show my 2 cycling budies around Tokai, the goal being to get to the Mast. About 1km from the start my one friend's chain falls off the small chainring. So he gets it back on again and then about 100m on it happens again, my other friend and I stop and ask him if he is good. He says yes but wants to adjust his seat height (unrelated to chain issue) and then jumps back on and off we go again. All is well untill the around 2.5km where his chain jumps off again. We stop and check it out, I suggest we adjust the bottom limit on his FD as the gap is quite big when he is in full granny (This is an entry-level bike). I follow him closely when he starts and it sounds like he is aggressively changing gears up front and then when he hits a bump the chain falls off. I tell him to not be agressive with the gears, he assures me he is not changing gears but it keeps slipping.

 

At about 3km it falls off again and this time we spot the broken chainlink. This is def the issue. None of us has a chain-break. This is when normal people write off the ride and start heading home (hopefully finding someone with the required tools). We decide to whip out the multi-tool and some rocks and do some serious bushstyle fix. After about 20min (a few passers-by ask if we need help and we "MEN" gladly tell them we are fine) we manage to get the 1 broken link apart (not off yet). This is the point where we realize this is not going to work!!! We finally ask a lady if she has a chainbreak as she rides by, but she hasn't. About 5 min later another lady comes riding down the road asking if we are looking for a chainbreak..... YES!!!!! (The first lady had caught up to her buddies and mentioned it to them, we had already previously told them that we were (MACHO) fine! )

 

To cut an already long story short, even with the chainbreak we made a hash of everything. We hadn't thought about the master link (which she had to supply too ) needing to go between Male links and in the end had to take out more links than is recommended , The lady eventually jumped in and sorted us out (after keeping her back for a long time( to us))

 

Once fixed we made it to about 2km from the mast when the same buddy decided to pump his back tyre up a bit and somehow managing to loosen the valve nipple and blow it out into the bushes somewhere. Needless to say none of us had a spare tube. We tried a thing or 2, (but for the sake of any dignity we possibly have left) I will leave out the details. We ended up walking from that point to the carpark without passing anyone!!!!

 

At the coffee shop we sat there thinking about how much of a bunch of neandethals on bikes we were!!!!!!! We laughed a lot at the stories probably being told about us...

 

So THANK-YOU ladies and forgive our foolish ways. We have learnt a thing or a thousand!!!