My second day, Ivan’s third, turned out to be much longer than we had expected. We originally planned to only go to Calexico but the downhill and easy riding in the morning got us to that destination about 9:30 AM. After a quick fuel-up of Gatorade, sandwich, and consultation with our SAG, we decided to carry-on towards Yuma – which would be a total of 115 miles for the day. The plan started out well but by the last 40 miles of the afternoon, the ride turned into very rough roads and hard going. Old Highway 80 became a desolate and abandoned road that was checked with expansion cracks every two to three feet as well as having serious asphalt deterioration. Even along Interstate 8 the shoulder was bumpy with raised joints every 10 feet. I don’t remember any of the back roads in Thailand being as terrible as these roads.
Needless to say, we were pretty done-in at the end of that day, and it wasn’t until the next day at about mile 80 that Ivan noticed that my rear wheel was out of true. It seems as though the pounding we took the day before busted my rear hub spoke flange, and one of the spokes was no longer anchored. I was able to carry-on by opening up the brake calipers completely.
We stopped at a roadside rest call Dateland, which has an historic airfield, not to mention super date milkshakes, and shortly thereafter we had another mechanical failure. Actually it was more of an electrical failure, a failure of the heart. Ivan noticed that his heart monitor reading on his Garmin was tacking up to the 170s. We rested for short while under an overpass where his pulse still wouldn’t slow to less than 150 beats and felt to this aging paramedic (me) like Atrial-Fib. We moved moderately to a rest stop and called for the SAG to pick us up at about mile 86 for the day. Our back-to-back centuries were foiled.
After a shower and short rest in the Gila Bend motel, the tachycardia and arrhythmia’s persisted, so we took Ivan to the closest hospital, which was in Chandler, south of Phoenix. As we all know once you “present” to an ER with any form of cardiac issues, they run you thru the gauntlet of tests and billable charges. 24 hours on the roller-coaster of tests, questions, waiting and with two differing opinions on the cause of the A-Fib, he was released famished and okayed to continue the ride.
A trip to Performance Bicycle was all I needed to replace the rear wheel. No questions, tests or waiting involved, but it wasn’t covered by MediBike either.
