The Shocking Moment

Before I started the trip I thought about everything what could happen to my bike. I've got tools to fix a broken chain, to exchange the tube, to exchange the brakes, to replace the cable from my light and to repair a broken gear cable. But you simply can't be prepared for everything especially not what happened today.

Nice bike trail along the canal in the woods

Everything started normal, my goal this day was to end the Chesapeake and Ohio canal trail and continue at least 40km on the Great Allegheny Passage from Cumberland in the direction of Pittsburgh. Due to no hills I was able to ride with about 18 km/h which is pretty good considering that my average speed of the last couple of days has never been more than 15km/h. The only bad thing about this trail is that it is mostly gravel which means many potholes and cause it's in the woods, many sticks on the trail.

Trail during a breakthrough through a mountain part

I must have hit these things to often cause after just 11 km I suddenly, completely out of nowhere came to a stop! My back wheel somehow blocked and I wasn't able to ride further at all anymore. When I looked then what actually happened I saw that the metal-part of the wheel where the brakes push against and which keeps the tire in position just started to come off and separate itself from the rest of the wheel. You could even see parts of the inner tube coming out and this "extension" pushed against the brakes and blocked my wheel finally.

Well....fuck!

In a situation like this you should usually call your friends or family to pick you up and bring your bike to repair immediately cause apparently it's not possible or even safe to continue. Well...only problem for me: I was in the middle of nowhere on a lonely bike trail, no reception, no street access and the next bike-shop about 80 km away in Cumberland! So I had no choice, there was only one thing I could do: Continue! Somehow...
Only way to do that was to remove the back brakes to get the wheel rotating again. So I continued without any back-brakes on the trail. Lucky for me I headed upstream which means I didn't have to brake at all! All I could do till Cumberland was hoping not to hit any more potholes or sticks and that the damage wouldn't increase itself. The outcome of that of that was that I got like an little heart attack everytime I saw a pothole or stick too late or hit it just slightly.

Finally approaching Cumberland!

Somehow and too be honest, I didn't believed that it would be possible I made it the whole 80 km to Cumberland with that half broken wheel and just reached the shop in time. After a two and a half hours surgery, which was totally thrilling to me (at first the wheel didn't fit, then it was to wide for then it was to wide for the brake etc.etc. which would have meant I would have stuck in Cumberland for days! - but too much to tell:) ) I got a completely new wheel wiith a new tire and tube!! This guy who did it totally saved my whole trip, I'll definitely give a good review about that shop on their FB-page!

Bike during the surgery:/

Guy who saved my day!!:D

So much could have gone wrong that day but in the end I didn't even loose 3 hours! unbelievable!

Cumberland Trail Connection - best Bike Shop in the world!! :)

After all that I just went out of town and looked for a nice place to rest for the night (didn't now if it was allowed to camp along the trail, but to be honest, I didn't care about this at all after that day!

Place I stayed the night

PS: before I forget to say anything positive about that day: The trail itself is really nice in this part and we'll maintained. The canal even cuts a mountain at one point and you cycle through an old 1km-Tunnel which is pretty cool:)

Entrance if the bin-lighted "PawPaw-Tunnel"

Looking outside the tunnel