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 Right, let's try this one. I decided it would be silly to get the rear wheel repaired again as it would probably break again and I didn't want to spend every alternate day waiting around bike shops. The next option was to try to buy a new wheel but whenever I've tried to replace wheels before, the bike shops have always had to order them, which takes about five days. The third option was to buy a new bike. That can be done alost instantly but I would have had no guarantee that the new bike would be any better than this one. I would also have had to transfer the pannier rack, bike computer, and so on, from one bike to the other. Instead, and at even greater expense, I decided to go home and get this wheel off my previous bike. Two days after leaving my current bike here in Laon, I'm back with the wheel. This wheel has been a few thousand miles already and is therefore probably closer to its eventual demise than I had thought the wheels on a new bike would be, but at the moment it looks to be in good condition. It's never broken a spoke so I hope I won't have any more of that kind of trouble for a while. To be on the safe side, I've brought the tool for getting the cogs off and I'm going to retain several spokes off the broken wheel to use as spares. I would hope to be able to start getting some long days in now, but I want to spend a while tomorrow morning testing this wheel so I won't have time for a very long ride after that, and before much longer, I'll be into the Alps, which will slow me down. I had hoped to get a few 100-mile days under my belt in this region of France. Instead, the longest day I have had on the whole ride so far has been the 75 miles from Minster Lovell to London. It's now been six days since I arrived in Dover. Measured in a straight line, I'm not even 150 miles from there yet. UTC Time: 17:42, Saturday 30 May 2009 Local Time: 19:42, Saturday 30 May 2009 Estimate of longitude: 3° 37' 23.34" E = 3.623150° Estimate of latitude: 49° 34' 14.17" N = 49.570602° Possible error on position estimate: 10 metres | |