Friday April 20, 2012
When last I left you, I was in a hotel in Carmel. I had nothing to do really. The trike was dead.
With nothing but time on my hands, I start to work the phone. First, let’s call some more local bike shops. Surely somebody has a 20″ rim in stock? Yellow pages open I dial and dial. “No”, “sorry”, “we can order if for you”. Why doesn’t anybody stock 20″ rims? Nobody in Monterey County seems very interested in BMX, and certainly nobody knew what the heck a recumbent trike was.
OK – not so local. My old standby Dana at Bent Up Cycles in LA has a rim! And it’s still early enough so that he can ship it for delivery on Friday! OK – but where to send it? Who can build me a Rohloff wheel?
Nancy is staying in San Francisco with her girlfriend Dianne. It so happens that Nancy has just retrieved her bike from Cycle Monkey, in El Cerrito, where she had her shift cables replaced. Nancy gave Stefan at Cycle Monkey a call – he has no rim, but he does have time to build me a wheel on Friday.
OK – so I have found a wheel, and Nancy has found a wheel builder. That sounds promising, now we just need to get them together with my hub. Dana arranges to ship the rim via UPS next day. Nancy agrees to drive from San Francisco to pick up me and the bike. All the moving pieces start to come together.
Nancy leaves San Francisco at 5:00 AM, to pick me up at 7:30 is Carmel. We load up the bike and all my gear, and head for breakfast. A quick breakfast, and we are on the road to San Francisco. While on the road, we give Dana a call and get the tracking number for the rim.
The UPS shipment has been a little delicate to arrange, since Stefan was not able to get to his shop until later in the morning – say 10:30 or 11:00. With the tracking number in hand, we call UPS and learn – to our dismay – that they have already been to the shop, found nobody there, and have rescheduled the delivery for Monday morning! Aaaaachh!
But Stefan is not to be deterred! He starts to work the phone with UPS. He calls the tracking line, escalates to the supervisor, gets the local office supervisor on the phone. Ultimately he learns that the truck, with the wheel on board, will be on a particular block of a particular street in El Cerrito at 12:30. If we can flag down the truck, we can get the package!
Nancy positions herself on one end of the street, and I plant myself on the other. Anybody seen a UPS truck? The minutes tick slowly by…….
Wait! There it is. I’ve spotted the brown UPS truck pulling into a parking space just up the road. The driver notices my animated calisthenics. Perhaps she thought I was having a heart attack. In any event she stops and looks at me quizzically. I explained what I need, and she is happy to help. Smiling, she hands be a big box containing the treasured rim!
Houston, the Eagle has landed! Against all the odds, we have manged to unite a rim, my hub and a wheel builder in San Francisco only 24 hours after my wheel failure in Carmel. All is not lost – the adventure continues.
Big shout out to Stefan at The Cycle Monkey. Cycle Monkey is the US partner and distributor for Rohloff hubs, and provides custom wheel building and hub maintenance services. Their approach to the work is very professional, and their customer service is absolutely top notch! Thank you Stefan!
I lost a day and a half of my ride up the coast. I’m already in San Francisco now. So Nancy and I will do a local ride here tomorrow, and then head to Sacremento to participate in Sunday’s Tour of the American River for Trikes and Recumbents (TARTAR). I’ve been looking forward to meeting these folks, many of whom I have been exchanging e-mail messages with on BROL for years. Its going to be fun!