On a Bike and a Prayer
day 16. dehydrated dinner in demnate
The rooster wheezed painfully into life at 5.30am well before the dawn glow had breached the blue star-light sky. It crowed deafeningly four times before I shone my torch into its red eyes in a vain bid to shut it up. It crowed once more - I switched off the beam and it remained silent. This was only temporary though, and by 6.45am we had been driven to distraction.
The road to Demnate was an up and up affair. For the first time though we managed to get into a sort of team rhythm - each taking it in turn to lead for a kilometre or so, and then the other two skimming past to take a lead. The road coasted past and the whirr of our wide off-road tyres on the hot tarmac bought the countryside alive with screams and whoops of joy and glee from rosy cheeked children with black matted hair and dust tainted dresses. On we sped - waving and singing `Bonjour Monsieur' replies to the greetings that propelled us on our way.
As mid-day glared up, we reached Tanannt - a small single street town with a sprawling souk in the dust bowl behind. On a corner near the water tower was a little corner shop stocking everything from Smartees to milk. We lunched in the cool inside and Andrea dozed in our debris on the table as the villagers came and starred and stayed with glum - depressed looks. Even the children here looked world weary. We stayed sometime to write postcards, get some money and rest.
Demnate arrived in a blur of back streets and oily garages. We found a hotel and Stephane forged in as usual taking command of the situation and appearing moments later on the roof to shout down the price, the washing facilities and a general appraisal. Camped on a roof we dining on our dehydrated meals and cleaned the bikes.
All day my wheels had been
clanking as loose spokes pinged and clanged on the pot-holed road. On the roof
I hung the bike on a washing line to tighten the spokes and true the wheels.
The hub also looked like it was in trouble, the cones grating when I turned
them. On dismantling this, I found several cracked and split bearings and that
most were pitted excessively. Even the cones on one side were pitted badly.
The bearings we could replace, but I had to make do with just sanding down the cones. In the dusk I was losing bearings everywhere and left the reassembly job until the morning.