yeah, that's pretty frelled
It seems like today I did nothing but cross back and forth repeatedly along the length of the Rotorua CBD, sometimes with my my bike on my back, sometimes not. I imagine I looked quite like Quasimodo, or perhaps, if I may be dramatic, like Jesus carrying the cross he would be nailed on. At least the CBD is a grid, which makes things easier. Since the pig & whistle is at the center of the grid (mystically, if not cartographically), I headed in that direction. The single speed mountain bike race was getting amped in front of the pub, dozens of cyclists stroked their beauties, fastened their numbers onto the handlebars and chatted each other up. It seemed a pretty friendly and uncompetitive affair. I bought a soy hot chocolate from the cafe-on-wheels (not it's actual name) and attempted to mingle with the hope of finding someone who had a truing stand in their possession, or if that failed, at least a spanner or two. The wheel, on inspection, was so badly bent that there was no way I was going to be able to true the thing on the bicycle itself. I was first going to have to take it off and stand on it to bend it back into something vaguely cylindrical. Unfortunately the adjustable spanner I had brought along wasn't really doing the trick, it's flexible nature meant that it just tended to slip over the nuts I needed to remove without actually budging them.
Unfortunately nobody actually had any tools on them, so I waited until 1:00 for Rotorua Cycles open. I bring in my bike and the mechanic tells me to spin the wheel for him -- it will barely go a quarter of a turn before it's stopped by the frame. "Yeah, that wheel's had it," the mechanic tells me. Fortunately, they seem to be the only one of 8 cycle shops that has 24" rims. The other ones I checked don't sell them -- as the guy at bike culture told me, 24" is a "kid's bike." It sets me back $70, but at least now I know I have a rim that won't go out again so easily -- unless I do something foolish again.
It's a royal pain in the ass getting both the bicycle and the new rim back to the hostel, since I really need two hands just to carry the bike. Of course, now I need a spanner. Four trips later I've got three spanners and two nuts off,. Unfortunately I still can't get this one nut off from inside the gear-- I don't know how I'm supposed to get in there. Fortunately there are a bunch of contenders for the single-speed MTB race in town that are staying at the backpackers I'm at. I ask one of them if they know how to get the thing off, and after puzzling over it for a few minutes he concludes that I need a special bike tool.
Since I'm not going to get any more work done on the bike till tomorrow, I walk to Pak n Save and buy myself some dinner and a couple of witbiers. Afterwards in the dorm room have a nice chat with a british guy and girl about travelling. The guy recounts how he climbed Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia and nearly fell off the side while trying to save an empty camera bag. I found this interesting, since Patrick had just told me that it's extremely frowned upon to climb Uluru, due to it's being held in sacred regard by the Aborigines. Apparently what he did was give $50 to some aboriginal group and suddenly they didn't mind so much.
April 26
Wake up bright and early so I have a bit of time to kill around the hostel while I wait for the shops to open at 8:30 or so. I just strike out in any direction -- I'm bound to find a cycle shop somewhere. I wonder why everything's closed, since Anzac day was yesterday. There's a sign on the door of Kiwibikes that says they won't be open till 11:00. I ask at the isite what the deal is. Turns out it's Sunday, and that's why everything's closed. This slightly irks me coming from a country with 24 hour pharmacies and seven elevens. Even in Wellington there were cycle shops open on Sundays. Ah well, when in Rome. I wander over to the Pig & Whistle where there's a day-after-the-race breakfast going on, hoping maybe I can bug one of these bicycle mechanics to open their shop already, but the woman behind the bar susses out that I don't belong there. Finally Kiwibikes opens up, and the mechanic spins the wheel horizontally on some sort of device and it's off. Doesn't charge me (and really, he shouldn't) and I'm on my merry way.
by 3pm I've got the rim on there, the tire pumped up. and my brakes finally tuned with a newly bought mutitool to replace the lost one. I've also replaced the rear brake cable which was starting to fray. I don't have wirecutters so I tie up the excess end with velcro. The weather's still unpleasant though (it's been overcast and wet since at least yesterday) and it's too late to hit the road now, so I guess I'll stay in Rotoru one more night. I can't access the wifi at my hostel anymore since paypal has decided I'm not me. So I book into Astray, only to find out that their wifi is way too expensive. I send them a comment giving them a piece of my mind. The clerk at Astray is friendly and helpful at least, and has his own spin on the famous oceanian "no worries." Apparently everything to him is "no drama." I kind of like it. Since there's really nothing else to do in this weather and I'm too beat to do much else anyway, I ride over to the cinema and watch The Boat that Rocked, an awesome film with Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, Till The Devil Knows You're Dead) and that guy who played Slartbartfast in the Hitchhiker movie. I'ts about Radio Rock, a radio station on a boat in England's North Sea. Hilarious and highly recommended. I'm interrupted by a phone call. Checking the message later, I find that it's from SiteWifi asking me for my email address so they can send me a written response to my enquiry. And that was at 6:00pm on a Sunday. I don't understand this country sometimes.
I unlock my bike and start riding it home only to discover that the rear tyre has gone out. Did I pinch the tube when I put it on? Was it damaged in the spill that buckled my wheel? In any case I'll save it for tomorrow, it's too wet and dark to deal with now.
I don't really want to ride over to the supermarket in the rain, so I make do with some canned spaghetti and watch the first half hour or so of Double Impact. I didn't realize just how campy (to be generous) this movie was when I was 8. Also, for some reason I could have sworn the two Van Dammes were actually different actors.
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