This bike touring blog post covers the day's ride between Pinotepa and San Jose del Progresso in Mexico. Part of my Pan American bike tour.
Bicycle Shop in Pinotepa
(Blog post written Jan 29 2010)
On leaving Pinotepa, I cycled by a bicycle shop, and so decided to pop in.
The guy in charge had just come off a bike ride himself, which I took to be a positive sign. In addition, he didn’t look at my bike as though it was a spaceship just landed from another planet, which is often the reaction I get if I take it to a bicycle shop in smaller towns in Mexico.
I explained the gear shifting problems, which he seemed to think might need the cable replacing. Fair enough. He spent a while swapping and greasing cables, and in addition played with both the front and rear derailleur’s.
End result – I still have to use the two handed gear shifting technique to change gear on the rear derailleur, and now the front derailleur is not indexed correctly either. Bugger.
On a more positive note, I took the opportunity whilst in the bike shop to get new brake pads put on rear and front, so at least now I don’t get a metal on metal grinding sound whenever I brake going downhill.
As the total cost for all this was 30 pesos including parts and labour, it wasn’t a totally bad move to go there, and I now know definitively that I need a new gear shifter.
The actual cycling
As for the day's cycling, it was mainly uphill for the first 30 kms and downhill after that. A bit of a trudge to be honest through uninspiring surroundings, and at the small town of San Jose del Progresso I stopped at Hotel Cactus with just 67 kms done. They had an incredibly noisy couple of parrots.
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