Or, rather, still napping. I'm in Hazard, Kentucky at a Super 8. I've had a rough couple of days, details of which will be forthcoming. Thrills and chills, I tells ya. Thrills and chills.

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I haven't written very much here about my more negative states of mind. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I tend to write less when I'm not in a good place, emotionally. And second, I'm not entirely sure it would make for good reading, which is mostly a function of how well I write about the subject. But it is part of the experience, so I suppose I should make the attempt, if only for the possibility of catharsis.

As I mentioned in my brief note yesterday, I'm in a Super 8 motel in Hazard, Kentucky, which is just about 30 miles from the hostel in Pippa Passes where I stayed Wednesday night. Pippa Passes, in turn, was a 57-mile ride from Elkhorn City, which is where my current low state began (I say "current" because it's been, unfortunately, a recurring state).

If you'll recall, I ended up spending two nights in Elkhorn City in a misguided attempt to avoid riding in the rain that the goons at NOAA assured me would be arriving on Tuesday. It seemed the right choice to make, especially after spending two nights camping in the rain. But the rain never came, so I spent the day alone in the dimly lit, grubby motel room, venturing out only once to hit the ATM in the center of town. Elkhorn "City" is really a misnomer...in addition to the motel/store/restaurant complex I was staying at, the entire town consisted of one stop light, two banks, a restaurant, a closed Rite-Aid, and an optometrist.

I have not yet been able to consistently adopt the proper stance regarding this trip. If it is, ultimately, about making it all the way to Santa Barbara under my own power, then I am way behind schedule, and every low-mileage day or rest day in a motel is an occasion for anxiety. If I do manage to put myself into the "the journey's the thing" frame of mind regarding mileage and destination, it doesn't last long...I miss my old home, I miss my Pea, and my psyche is well-used to obsessing and mulling over such thoughts until I've reduced myself into a near-paralytic, fearful mess of incipient tears and knotted stomachs. Well, just one knotted stomach. You get the idea.

The task I have set for myself is daunting. Not only is there the physical effort to contend with, which, given the terrain, has been nearly overwhelming, there is also the psychological impact of making the attempt alone. I've got no one to egg me on up hills, or to get my ass out of bed when I've decided on a single rest day in a motel and am tempted by a second, or third, or fourth. There's no one with me in the morning, no one waiting at the end of the day, and no one to help me through any situation that might arise on the road.

Wednesday's ride was extremely difficult, and not only because of the mileage. The folks I met at the motel when I arrived had sensibly left the previous day, so I departed alone, as usual. At some point during the early portion of the ride, a corner of my trailer cover came unsecured, and one of my ditty bags fell out onto the road, unnoticed. I discovered the loss when I pulled into a general store. It was a toiletry bag, but I lost my bottle of Mobic, a prescription anti-inflammatory that I cadged a supply of from my orthopedist before I left as a "just in case" measure. I lost my Flonase and my albuterol inhaler, neither of which I've actually used yet. The bag also held my earplugs, a pair of grooming scissors, a sewing kit, a bottle of Camp Suds, and my collection of motel soap. Nothing vital, but it was a psychological blow, nonetheless. I rode back along my route for a half-mile or so, but found nothing.

At the mid-point of the ride, as the sun was getting high in the sky, I stopped at an ice cream place at the intersection of routes 611 and 23. Not for ice cream - for their Pepsi machine. I've found that the sugar and caffeine of soda is helpful on longer rides, so I stop almost whenever I see a machine. I payed the machine its $1.25, downed the soda, and headed off on Route 23, a busy four-lane road with a downhill cant to it. After I turned off onto the next road, I stopped to get some fig newtons out of my pannier.

That's when I saw that I had foolishly left the top of my pannier open. My wallet was gone.

The crushing sensation literally knocked my to my knees, there in the gravel on the side of the road. I frantically tore through the pannier's contents, scattering fig newtons into the dirt, hoping that the wallet had just slid down into the bottom of the pannier. It hadn't.

Already getting tired from the day's riding so far, and still low in spirits from the wasted day in Elkhorn City, I knew that I had to turn around and ride back up that hill. I decided right there that if I didn't find my wallet, my trip was over. Obviously, I'm not much of a steely-eyed adventurer if that's what it took to bring me to that point, but it did.

As I rode back to the intersection of route 23, a fellow in a newer-model green pickup pulled up across the road and commented on my rig - desperate, I told him of my predicament, and asked for his help. I thought that my wallet might be up at the ice cream shop, and I knew he could get there far faster than I could. It was an incautious choice. But he knew the place I was talking about, and said that he'd head up there. If he found the wallet, he'd meet me as I rode back up 23.

So, with everything hanging in the balance, and the additional possibility of getting robbed, I turned onto the shoulder of Route 23, heading back on the same side I rode down and, thus, riding the wrong way. I was numb, trying to think about how I would arrange to end the trip and get back somewhere safe and familiar with no money, no resources at all. I was almost relieved: the decision would be made for me, or at least, there would be an excuse. I didn't have to press on, forcing my weak self go through the motions of the Big Journey.

After about half a mile, I saw the familiar black nylon lump, lying there on the shoulder. I had cried when I lost the wallet, and I cried again now, kneeling on the side of the road and clutching it to my face. I put it into its zippered pocket in the pannier - my failure to do that accounted for its dropping out in the first place - and closed it up tight. I turned around and rode back down the hill, and as I waited at the light to once again make the turn onto the next road, the green pickup truck pulled up next to me. He hadn't found the wallet, of course, but I thanked him profusely. He drove on down 23...he had actually gone out of his way to head up to the ice cream shop to help me out. The story might've been different if he had found the wallet, of course...but I don't think so.

Then, with the morning's emotional roller coaster behind me, I had the physical ups and downs of 30 miles' worth of fairly serious climbs before I got to Pippa Passes, including Abner Mountain. At another general store, I was cautioned by some boys on motorbikes and quads about the mountain: "There's drunks up there, and dopeheads," they told me, and the road was narrow and curvy. I didn't have any problems, but it just added to the sense of general unease I've had since crossing into Kentucky mountain country.

When I finally reached the hostel, I met up with JB, an older man from North Carolina who's riding a RANS two-wheeled recumbent and making a big loop along part of the TransAm route and the East Coast loop. He had passed me earlier on in the day, shortly after I lost the ditty bag. A 24-year old named Al was also staying at the hostel. He had started in Tijuana, and was heading to Yorktown and then up to Boston. Traveling fast and light, he had averaged 100 miles a day or more across most of the western portion of his trip, and was now doing "light" days of eighty and sixty miles through the hills. Eastbounders are good to talk to, because they can tell you about good places to stay, and offer news of the route.

I'm not like Al. He's younger, fit, and has an upbeat attitude that no doubt keeps him away from the darker emotional territory I spend too much time in. "It's a mental game," he told me. "You'll get into your groove, just wait."

After Al and JB left the hostel yesterday morning, I was still plodding around loading up my heavy trailer with all of the heavy things I'm toting along behind my heavy trike. Almost as soon as I hit the road, I could feel a disturbing lack of strength in my legs that didn't bode well for the planned 40-mile ride to a church in Chavies, which some eastbounders had left a note about at the Cookie Lady's place in Afton. I stuffed myself with an entire box of cereal bars and downed a Mountain Dew, but I knew it was a lost cause. My muscles were depleted from the previous day's ride, and no amount of carbohydrate was going to change that. I had thought the night before that I might even push another 13 miles beyond Chavies to get to the campground at Buckhorn Lake, where JB was headed, but I could tell there was no chance of that.

So I checked the map and saw that there were motels in Hazard, a few miles miles off the route. On Route 80, I passed a small billboard for the Super 8 motel, promising renovated rooms, microwaves, refrigerators, and wi-fi, just seven miles ahead. I decided that there was no point in torturing myself just to end up on a church lawn, so I called and made my reservation.

Like many roads in Kentucky, Route 80 - a busy, four-lane affair with lots of truck traffic from the strip mines that border it - has "rumble strips" on the shoulder, which are supposed to wake up drivers who swerve off the road. They also make the shoulders nearly useless for cycling, and are loathed by all who pedal. You can see one in the lower right corner of the photo. Fortunately, the shoulders on 80 are wide, and I could ride to one side of the strips, away from traffic...until they changed. Instead of running parallel to the shoulder, they became patches of perpendicular washboards, evenly spaced every 75 feet or so. The seven-mile stretch of highway I rode had several up-and-down climbs and descents of about 150 feet in altitude each. On the downhill side, the rumble strip patches became regularly-spaced buzzes beneath my tires at high speed, not too bad at all. When I reached the motel and went around to the back of the trailer to turn off my tail lights, I saw that the left bracket had vibrated loose and fallen off, taking my tail light with it.

After the previous day's experiences? Not a big deal. Today, as I walked back along 80 to the Wal-Mart for some food supplies, I found the bracket and the remains of my tail light. The headlight, along with its battery and charger, is going to get boxed up and sent on ahead to my mom in Santa Barbara, thus becoming the first piece of equipment I've shed. It was kind of a dumb choice...I brought it along just because it's my headlight - I used it on night rides, and it was natural to put it on the trike. But I don't really need to see on this trip, I need to be seen, so a cheaper light with a "blinky" setting would've been a better choice. I'll pick one up at a bike shop along the route, along with a new tail light.

Pea thinks that my recurrent low spirits and, sometimes, downright misery are an emotional "stage" of my trip, like a stage in the Tour de France. I certainly hope she's right. Contributing to all of this was the stress and chaos that began the whole thing: trying to sell the house so that I could leave on May 1, and having the deal get so fouled up that at one point I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to leave at all; the emotional strain of leaving Pea; knowing that I wasn't as trained up as I needed to be. Getting underway was less a celebration of a journey begun than a escape from one form of massive uncertainty into another.

Then there's the psychology of the terrain I've been riding through. I can't see the horizon here. The forests and mountains are close quarters, claustrophobic at times, and I feel bound up and limited by them. I'm looking forward to the praries, if I can manage to push on.

I'm not really a believer in the whole "growth through suffering" thing, particularly when said "suffering" is deliberately sought. What I've got here is me - the same "me" I've always been - in a situation where there is little or nothing to distract me from my states of mind, my flaws...in short, my self. And what I've discovered about myself is nothing new, nothing I didn't already know, at some level: I tend towards unsourced sadness. I dwell on things that are not uplifting, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. I have been this way, I now fully realize, for my entire life. I'm sure there are various psychological explanations for it, but my several attempts at therapy - both pharmacological and otherwise - have only scratched the surface of what it is within me that drives this process. So whatever "suffering" I experience here, on this journey, is really no different than the suffering that I would be experiencing if I had just gotten an apartment and carried on with life as usual.

The difference is that out here, on my own, there is nothing I can do to hide from myself. Several days in a motel is no different than successive days at campsites or hostels. Alcohol use to excess is so obviously counterproductive that it's not even half an option. There are only two choices: press on, or give up.

And whatever choice I make...well, there I'll be.

Tomorrow: a short 25 miles to the Buckhorn Lake campground. There aren't many places to stay around here, so it's the short ride tomorrow and then a 60-mile push to a motel in North Irvine, which will leave a bitty 20-mile ride to Berea and then - finally, blessedly - out of the mountains.

Until Missouri, of course.

But that's later.

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By the way...I'm currently in a Verizon Wireless "dead zone," as far as digital and enhanced wireless services go, so posting may be sporadic. No posting from campsites and that sort of thing...

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This morning was, I hope, the absolute emotional nadir of this journey. I slept fitfully, and when the cell phone alarm rang at 6:30 I switched it off and snoozed until 7:30, a familiar knot of dread in my gut. I only had 25 miles to go today, but I felt the siren song of the Motel Room: stay here, it tempted, where there is a bed and a television, and you don’t have to pedal or dodge traffic or risk anything. Stay here.

It was all I could do to start gathering up my scattered gear and pack the trailer. I was like a zombie, going through these motions, unsure about whether I’d actually manhandle the trike through the doorway and set off...ever. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of abject despair…nothing made sense, there was no reason for any of this, it was all pointless. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I broke down. After a few minutes of doing that, I resumed packing. I knew that things would only get worse if I stayed in that room.

When it was time to roll the trike out, I saw that the right front tire was flat. I’ve been fortunate so far: I discovered the two flats I’ve had while in a motel room. I feared that this was the same deteriorating valve problem that caused the rear tire to spontaneously deflate back in Charlottesville, but it wasn’t. A small corkscrew of wire, which had probably been there for days, had worked its way through the Kevlar fibers and pricked a tiny hole in the tube, which I identified by inflating the tube and sticking it in a sinkful of water until I found bubbles. I patched the tube, removed the piece of wire from the tire, and reinflated it…after pausing for a minute or two to curl up in a ball by the door. Very pathetic. I felt absolutely wretched.

Last night I had a dream that I was listening to George Harrison. The previous night I dreamed that I made a fruit smoothie, which prompted me to buy some fruit at the Wal-Mart. That worked out pretty well for me, so after I finally checked out of the motel and pedaled up Route 80 to the exit for Route 15, I put on All Things Must Pass. And: everything transformed. The dreaded ride became The Ride. I didn’t think about the fact that I hadn’t left until 10:20, and would surely get hammered by the sun. I rode along Route 15, playing tag with the rumble strips. When it was time to climb, I climbed…a lot. Two or three climbs, actually, one up to 1,500 feet, in the afternoon sun with no shade. I ate energy, drank fluids, and did what I had to do, encouraged by a spray-painted message on the road and a newly-buoyant heart.

When I finally got to Buckhorn Lake, I stopped at Spark’s General Store and picked up three bottles of Gatorade, a Coke, and two cans of pasta. Sparks (I presume) told me about the church in Booneville, where there was a free place to camp. But I had done my 25 miles, and so I rode another mile up the road to the site...where I couldn't find the attendant. What few open campsites there were all had yellow RESERVED cards on them. I knocked on the attendant's RV, to no avail. Annoyed, I did one circuit around the campground road, and finally decided to replenish my water supply at one of the unoccupied sites and get out of there. It was after three, and If I was going to press on for another 19 miles to Booneville, I didn't have time to hang around and see if the attendant deigned to show up and fit me into some miserable patch in the woods.

Back at Spark's store, I confirmed the Booneville setup: place to camp, free, even (yes!) a shower. When I asked if they had a bathroom I could use, he said they didn't...and gave me the key to the church up the road. There was a bathroom there I could use, he said.

When I unlocked the unassuming, brown-painted wooden door and stepped into the sanctuary, I was stunned: hand-planed, tongue-and-groove fitted beams soared in the vault overhead. The chandeliers were fitted with glass lanterns, and the ranks of a small pipe organ gleamed behind the altar, satin in the afternoon windowlight.

Completed in 1928, "The Log Cathedral" was constructed entirely of logs by the people of Buckhorn, and is considered the largest structure of its type in the world. (You can read more about the church here.) I spent as much time as I could spare ogling the woodwork and taking blurry flashless photos, then returned the key to Sparks. We talked about the church awhile. Obviously proud of his town's history and of the church, he told me that they still held services there as long as the weather was warm enough, usually May through October. I finally pedaled out of Buckhorn at 4:15.

There were more climbs, as I knew there would be. Led Zeppelin provided the impetus for those, as did the sun, sinking ever lower above the hills. With a dead headlight and only one tail light, I didn't want to be on the road when the sun finally dipped below the trees.

There was one other thing that kept me going: faith. I knew that I had those 19 extra miles in me, and doing them today meant that I'd have a reasonable 40 miles to ride tomorrow instead of a daunting sixty. When I finally reached Booneville, a couple of guys lounging on the steps behind the municipal building directed me up the road to the Presbyterian church. There, I found a small pavilion, designated for cyclists' use only, with a sink, a shower, a portajohn...and a message:

The styrofoam plate was tacked onto the wall next to the cyclist log book. I think these guys left it for me...and it was an affirmative, uplifting end to a day that started out so terribly.

I'm wondering if, like physical muscle, the psyche can be strengthened by the sort of emotional workout I've been experiencing lately.

As with a lot of things I'm wondering about these days...I suppose I'll find out.

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Today was supposed to be a simple 40-mile run from Booneville to a motel in Irvine. The map looked good, maybe a little up-and-down climbing here and there, nothing major. A dewfall across the field behind the church meant that I had to put the tent away damp, which isn't a good thing because it's starting to get some mildew growth...I'll have to remedy that when I've got some time and access to the requisite "mild detergent."

The day started innocuously enough...a bit of a climb out of Booneville, and then onto smaller roads bordered by forest and overhanging, eroded cliffsides, topped by trees with exposed roots clinging to the cliffs' edges. At about mid-morning, I encountered a brief, steep climb. Then another, and another...damn! There's a mountain between me and Irvine!

The altitudes on the GPS waypoints for this stretch didn't have any indication of such a climb, and I guess I just misread the contour lines on my route map. As the sun climbed higher into the slate sky, I found myself on what seemed to be the steepest climb of my journey so far. The pedals moved like I was pushing through thick mud. As I climbed around the curves, I kept passing small cemeteries on the sides of the road, all sparsely populated with newer headstones, some dating from the 90s, some dating from earlier but carved in the same style and with the same new-granite sheen. One of the larger cemeteries, mostly empty, was bordered by the road, curving around it and heading upward in an ever-steepening incline. Frustrated by the repetitive short climbs, I stopped there and downed some water, noting with concern that the Camelbak was getting sloshy and empty. Not thinking I'd have to deal with climbing in the day's heat, I hadn't brought any extra in the Dromedary bag.

I mounted up and attacked the hill. Throughout yesterday and today, I'd been hearing a grinding noise in the rear of the trike, which seemed to have something to do with my pannier pressing against the DualDrive hub's switchbox...when I lifted the pannier away from the box, the grinding stopped or lessened. I just needed to adjust the switchbox or the derailleur, I thought, but not now: the pedaling was so tough that I was reduced to counting off twenty strokes, resting, then counting off twenty more. It was the only way I could get up the hill.

At the top of the hill, it became clear that something was terribly wrong with the drivetrain. The pedals spun, but the rear wheel wasn't turning - in fact, I would start to roll backwards! I set the brake and got out, to be confronted by a rude sight: the bolts on either side of the rear axle had come entirely loose...the wheel was no longer attached to the trike's frame. I checked to make sure that both bolts were still present, then pushed the rig over to the side of the road into a gravel patch that marked the entrance to yet another small cemetery.

In one sense, it was a relief...I thought that I had completely stripped the internally-geared hub, which would have left me stranded on top of a mountain dozens of miles from anywhere. Bolts...those, I could tighten. I broke out the toolkit and got to work, removing the bungies that secured the Black Box and the solar panels to the rear rack, and taking off the pannier so that I could access the rear wheel. Sweat was pouring from every pore, and as the sun beat down on me, I suddenly realized that I was getting a little woozy. I needed to get out of the sun, immediately.

The cemetery plot was bordered by trees that offered shade, so once I got the bolts tightened and everything strapped back into place, I rode across the grass to seek shelter. I mixed up a bottle of Gu20 and drank it down, sitting in the trike's seat and resting for about twenty minutes. After eating a Clif bar, I headed back out into the hated sunlight.

After another few miles of riding along the undulating ridgeline, I sucked the last of my water out of the Camelbak. I had twelve miles to go when I finally began the descent off the mountain, so I steeled myself for a thirsty couple of hours until I reached Irvine. As I reached the flats, I passed another inspirational plate (thanks, guys!), strapped to a telephone pole with electrical tape. Encouraged, I forged ahead. At one point, I passed a ditch with water in its bottom, and I thought of my water filtration system...but I wasn't really at that point, not yet.

I passed into farm country, and the landscape opened up into fields bordered by steep, pyramidal mountains, more open land than I'd seen since central Virginia. I began to pass the occasional house, and I thought that it might be time to start knocking on doors. Then, I passed by Ron Sparkman, standing out in front of his house on Yon-Side farm. I pulled over to chat, and soon Mrs. Sparkman bought me a big styrofoam cup of icewater. Ron said that they get quite a few cyclists passing through, some of whom camped on his property across the road.

We talked about how isolated the communities are in this part of Kentucky, and about how, generally, folks here are good folks. But he told me a story about three young men who pushed a pickup truck up to the barn across from the house one night. One got out and knocked on his door, looking for gas. Ron only had diesel, for the tractor, and when it became clear that no gas was forthcoming, the man rejoined his companions in the pickup...then started it up and drove off. So it's good to be cautious in the mountains, and my sense of unease in some of the more isolated areas is not entirely unwarranted.

We chatted until it was time for Ron to go and "roll up some hay." Refreshed, with a newly-filled water bottle and Camelbak, I struggled through the last few miles into Irvine, stopping to ask a local out in front of his house whether I was headed the right way to get to the Oak Tree Inn where I'd be staying. He asked me about my trip and about the rig, seeing me off with "I can't say I understand it, but brother, more power to ya!"

Well, that makes two of us. I got my butt kicked today, but I made it, and now - as is only appropriate after a butt-kicking - I shall sleep. Tomorrow, it's on to Berea.

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I'm currently at a bike shop in Lexington, Kentucky. My Dual-Drive hub is shot. The bike shop called SRAM, who told them that the Dual Drive hub is not spec'd for loaded touring, which makes me wonder why the hell they spec'd it for their touring trike.

An angel named Bernie stopped when he saw me by the side of the road, and I rode to his mother-in-law's house a few hundreds yards away. Then he brought a pickup truck over and drove me and the trike to the bike shop in Lexington, about 45 minutes away.

I asked Johannes at Northeast Recumbents about the Dual Drive when I bought it, and told him what my plans were for the trike & trailer. He told me the Dual Drives hold up fine, and I was assuming that Greenspeed wouldn't spec a vital part without being sure that it was suited for the task.

So: I've got a busted hub here, about 5,000 miles left to go, and absolutely no assurances that this won't happen every 700 miles if I replace the hub with another Dual Drive.

So, I've got calls and e-mails in to Johannes and Greenspeed...Johannes is in New Jersey, but Greenspeed is in Australia, so I'm basically stuck until I can get the dealer or the manufacturer to step up to the plate.

Time, and probably money, that I don't have to spend.

Updates later, as warranted.

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Consider this: if I had stuck to my planned route and stayed in Buckhorn, I would've skipped Booneville, and wouldn't have seen the plate-borne encouragement tacked to the pavilion wall.

And, if I had not stopped just where I did this morning on the way out of Irvine, Bernie wouldn't have stopped to ask if I was OK. He said as much: if I had been in motion, pedaling up the hill when he passed me, he would have waved, and that would have been that.

Instead, he stopped, and I told him I was probably not OK...at that point, it was either my cassette or the rear hub that was dying, I wasn't sure which. He called his son-in-law (an avid cyclist) on his cell, who told him that the closest bike shop was in Lexington, about 45 minutes away by car. Bernie said he'd give me a ride to Lexington, if I needed it, which I did. I pedaled up the hill and met him at his mother-in-law's house. Then, he went back to his own house up the road, and returned in his pickup truck. I disconnected the trailer, and we loaded the trike into the truck.

Bill, the wrench at the shop, hadn't seen the SRAM DualDrive hub before, but after a look at the cassette and the decent amount of chain wrap I had, he quickly determined that it was the hub that was at fault. Bernie had gone off to get himself some breakfast - which is what he had been on his way to do when he came across me on the side of the road - and when he came back, I told him what the situation was: 1) the shop couldn't fix the hub; 2) calls and e-mail were in to my dealer and the manufacturer 3) most probably, nothing was going to happen until 5 or 6 PM at the earliest, when the Australians got in to work and checked their e-mail.

So...Bernie offered to drive me back to Irvine, load the trailer into the truck along with the trike, and drop me off at the Econo Lodge in Berea which had been my destination when I started pedaling this morning. And we even went back to the bike shop when, in my flustered state, I forgot to buy a supply the various energy foodstuffs that they had there, plus a replacement tail light.

Bernie is a former Marine and a retired State and Federal game warden, given to month-long canoe trips and day-long wanderings through the mountains near the log home where he lives with his wife, Cathy. While we drove hither and yon, he told me about his childhood in the mountains of Kentucky: no electricity, no indoor plumbing, but surrounded by the wilds and the woods, into which he would hike for days or weeks at a time. Not "backpacking," mind you: he would have a tarp, a knife, a compass, and that was all. He wouldn't follow trails, but would cut across the countryside, living off the land.

As we drove along the roads I would've ridden on today, we spoke of strip mining in Hazard, and about how the mining and timber companies have raped the land here and impoverished the people. Passing one of the numerous small churches that dot these mountain roads, the conversation turned to whether I'd be welcome in such a church (I would), his non-denominational belief in the Creator, and the necessity of not living in tomorrow or in yesterday. In Berea, he bought me lunch, and while we ate he remarked that it was his sensitivity to the wandering impulse which made him stop and check on me, there by the side of the road.

Now I'm waiting to hear back from Johannes, or Greenspeed, to see what they're going to do to help me out. At the moment, I'm not even off schedule. I will be, of course, but I was planning on taking a rest day here in Berea tomorrow. Now, I'll just be staying here for several days until I can get the trike repaired. Bernie offered to come and ferry me back to the bike shop, should I need it.

But it doesn't end there. The Lexington bikeshop is called Pedal The Planet, and they are a shop dedicated to supporting the touring cyclist. Not only did they offer a place to stay in Lexington if I needed it, they also offered to ferry me and my trike back to the shop if necessary, and to support me with parts or whatever else I might need throughout the rest of my journey. Mark, the shop owner, has done the TransAm and toured in more than 50 countries.

One way or the other, the rear wheel on this trike will be fixed, and I will move on. For now, I rest in a surfeit of grace. Part of the reason I embarked on this journey was to find out what America was like. I'm starting to see some of it. It's wonderful that this happened in Kentucky, which enjoys a less-than-favorable reputation as the home of hillbillies, the KKK, and bitter poverty. You can find all of those here. But they are accompanied by generous souls, angels of the road, who watch out for wayward travelers such as myself.

My heart is full.

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I called a Greenspeed dealer in Virginia, who gave me the number of Jerome Heddinger, Greenspeed's North American representative.

The result: because the bike shop in Lexington has no experience with the DualDrive hub, and thus wouldn't necessarily be adept at swapping the guts of the old hub for the guts of the new hub,* Jerome is sending me a new wheel with a new DualDrive hub. It'll even have a new cassette on it, which I can swap for the old cassette or not, my choice. All I have to do is put my old tire on the new rim and put the wheel on the trike. Jerome assured me that he's got trikes and tandems in service with DualDrives that have 10,000 miles on them, and that SRAM's "not spec'd for touring" is just a cop-out. I may have just gotten a bum hub. Touring tandems, for example, carry much more weight than I've got on my trike.

I am humbled and astounded by this turn of events. Greenspeed is a company that stands behind their products, even if their suppliers won't stand behind theirs. Rare, and wonderful.

Now, I'm going to go bask in my relief and in the support of a benevolent universe.


*LATER:

Paul Sims, Greenspeed's Production, Tech, R&D and Web Guy, wrote back to say,

The Dual Drive, like any other component, isn't bulletproof. It is fairly reliable though, with only a few of them ever having the problem you described. We have used them on our tandems for years, so loading isn't the problem. Many people are scared by an internally geared hub and are reluctant to crack it open. The fact that it can be disassembled so easily is a testament to its construction. The usual remedy is to just replace the hub center, this can be done almost as quick as changing a tire :-) I've read that Jerome has sent you another wheel, so this will obviously get you out of trouble. For what it's worth, the hub center comes out by removing the wheel from the trike, face the right hand side (sprocket side) down and undo the left hand jam nut and cone. Once the cone is removed you just lift the hub shell off the insides, that easy :-) Hopefully the rest of your trip is uneventful of trike mishaps, hope you have a good tour!

Which sounds like something I could do with a cone wrench...makes the whole "new wheel" thing a bit of overkill, and me feel kinda dumb. That's what happens when you give in to the Big Panic, I guess.

But I don't have a cone wrench; I'd have to go back to the shop in Lexington for that. And I don't want to impose too much on Bernie, so if I can just swap the wheel out here in the motel room, I should be good to go.

Like I said, though: one way or the other, the problem will be resolved, and I'll be underway soon. If this had to happen anywhere, it's best that it happened here...Berea looks like an interesting town, and unlike most Econo Lodges, this one is actually close to the town center.

So...I'll chill.

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A post about the ride the day before the hub exploded is now up. Scroll down or click here.

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I've mentioned here and there that part of this journey is about "discovering America," and as it's July 4 I'm feeling a bit of obligation to write a bit about that aspect of it. It is true that you'll see a lot of detail when you're moving through a country at average speed of eight miles an hour. But for me, right now, that detail has yet to resolve into anything resembling a theme, or a motif, or much of anything beyond the simple (and recent) observation that there are some mighty fine people to be found in the hills and hollers of Kentucky.

This is, I think, largely the result of the condition of Your Humble Narrator's head. Sitting here in my motel in Berea, I do feel as though I'm about to move from one stage of the trip to another, which is partly due to the anticipated change in terrain and partly to a change in myself, best exemplified by the difference between my reaction to losing my wallet and my reaction to the failure of the DualDrive hub. The first threw me into despair, followed by elation. The second just pissed me off, which was followed by expeditious problem-solving.

The greatest contribution to this sense of incipient change has been the people I've met. Because of my late departure (due to the incompetence of Ron the Mortgage Broker, who will, I hope, suffer paper cuts and unexpected blows to the head for the rest of his natural life), my low average daily mileage, and my over-reliance on motels, I've missed encountering very many fellow cyclists. For the first month, I was traveling in an isolated five-wheeled pod, deeply mired in my own states of mind. But as I've started to adjust to this life, I've started to meet more people, and they have enriched the experience immeasurably.

So, right now, I don't have much in the way of Pontificatin' about America going on. That'll come later, don't worry.

I hope you all had a reasonably decent Fourth, with suitably grilled foodstuffs and satisfying explosions.

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...I should also mention that, in addition to the people I've met on the road, there are people I've never met in person who are supporting me with encouraging e-mails, hitting the Tipjar, and offers of assistance and places to stay when I pass their way.

This being an online venture, that sort of support actually started early on, and continues to be a great morale booster. I won't name names, but you all know who you are! Thank you.

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