Marcus' sob story

03 Sep 2010

To win the Park Tool prize in last month's NZMTBR magazine you needed to submit your best broken-dropout sob story. You can comment on the stories on our Facebook page. This is Marcus' story:

Hello Tristan, I'm a keen reader of your New Zealan Mountain biker magazine.

Here's my sob story for the competition - it's even true!

Last year in the middle of winter, my wife and I and two other couples stayed in a flash crib in Tekapo. Four of us, complete FREDs, had heard about a track called the dusky trail from a friend who has a house in Twizel. We decided to do it, its quite popular in summer apparantly...............

I had a two year old avanti barracuda, this was the pinnacle of our technology amongst our motley collection of MTBs. That made me the expert, TUIs moment - yeah right. We duely arrived at the carpark off the Aoraki road to Mt Cook. It was freezing! We had this confirmed from one of the cars, which gave an outside thermometer reading of -4 degrees.

We cycled from the car park and shortly came across the twizel river crossing. I decided to take my shoes off so I wouldn't later ride in blocks of ice. I had to literally break ice at the edge of the river bank just to get in. Ever had someone continually attack your feet with shards of glass? That's what the water was like, I had to drag my wife across. "Who was the utter idiot who thought of doing this?" "..um, me actually.."

Frosty silence in a frosty landscape, appropriate somehow.

We got going and started to feel a bit better. We then got onto a clay track leading to a uphill reentrant. The clay had started to melt from the frost and became a gooey mess. Knowing what I know now, I am ashamed to say we ripped up the track by leaving big grooves in the surface. The mud stuck to our tyres making them look like balloon wheels from a moon buggy. The track was about to get its revenge however.

The pedalling got harder, mud pushing against the brakes and forks. I stopped to scrape some mud / an entire rugby field from my tyres. "Go on ahead, I'll catch you up." "sure thing hero" Domestic bliss, you gotta love it.

I got back on my bike. Something was very wrong. I looked back, a piece of metal, I now know to be a derailleur hanger, was broken. Hmmm, I know. I had heard from my brother in law about shortening the chain to make a bike a single speed. He owns a cannondale lefty, doesn't shave his legs - that sort of thing. An expert if ever there was one.

Checked my pack, ancient chain breaker duely found. Now, how do you...........?

20 minutes of cursing, ripped and freezing finger action later, I gave up. I couldn't even budge a pin. I squelched up the track to the others, who were just finishing their lunch. "All good?" came the breezy query.

"Ah no, its quite a complex job actually."

To cut a long story short I had to run / glide for 13 boggy kms until we ran into some other cyclists. These guys duely produced another chain breaker, somewhat smaller than mine, and handed it to me. Everyone watched. No pressure. The tool fitted my chain perfectly. Unfortunately this tool didn't know what to do with it. After I completely popped out three pins and couldn't get the links together again, my king saviour took pity on me and did the deed in about 2 minutes. You're not supposed to fully pop out the chain link pins apparantly or you can't reconnect the chain - amazing what you learn...

Profuse and embarrased thanks and I was on my way. Every bump knocked the chain off but it was quicker than running beside the bike. Eventually arrived into the fridge that was Twizel. I never seen icicles hang off trees before. Sculled coffee and devoured sticky buns by a fire. God I was cold! Warmed up and did the shuttle run to pick up a car on my beloveds bike. A short trip that turned into an epic because my tools were totally wrong for the job. Lack of nous didn't help much either.

Since then I've brought a Specialized FSR (now discontinued - nice) and had two lessons with Zane of MTB skills - Gabby's crowd. Thoroughly recommend them, great instruction.

Tools however, I've got some...not sure if they work. Purty please?

Keep up the good work with the mag.

Cheers, Marcus