The Turkish Dilema

As I write this I am sitting in a cafe waiting for a bus to take me to Istanbul. I am 900 km away and the bus is going to take 15 hours. Why aren't I cycling, well over the last few days it has been increasingly difficult to change gear. I had a similar problem in China which I managed to get sorted but some of the complications from that fix have come back to haunt me. I have a hub gear, which means that all the gears are internal to the hub, so no external derailleurs. This offers lots of advantages in terms of keeping things clean but when things go wrong it is pretty hard to fix. There is a cable inside which wraps around a brass drum and then the 2 cables come out and connect to 2 cables which come from the shifter on the handlebars. In China the internal (and one external) cable snapped. I fitted the internal spare and snipped it to length with poor quality wire cutters meaning the ends frayed so I could not connect it to the 2 cables from the shifter. The internal cable is 0.9mm and standard gear cable is 1.0mm. Luckily some random cable was found and the bike was fixed. However, there are 5 T20 torx screws which keep a mounting plate attached to the hub which you have to remove to access the internal cable. In China one of these was seized, but with a proper torx screwdriver it came of ok. At that time I only had a small end attachment one which was no good. So, all good in China and I got more spares sent out to Urumqi so if the same thing happens I can fix it. I also purchased some good quality wire cutters and the torx screwdriver.

So fast forward 10,000 km to Turkey and I am suddenly having difficulty changing gear. Shifting down is fine but it is ultra stiff to shift up, and I do not have the top 4 gears out of the 14 available. The cables from the shifters appear ok and even the cable from the hub appears OK. Maybe the internal cable is slipping out of the grooves on the drum as it was 0.8mm as I shift up jamming everything up. I decided to take the mounting plate of and fit the new internal cable to see if that fixed the problem, but I couldn't get the mounting plate off. All of the 5 screws were seized but 4 came loose, with 1 not budging and the more I tried to loosen it the more the screwdriver would slip of. I could go to a workshop and get it drilled out, or as Julian did with his, get something welded onto the screw to then lever it off. This would save me going to Istanbul on the bus. However, I had already been in contact with the bike shop (which is a Rolhoff hub gear dealer) for an internal oil change, new tires and a general service when I got to Istanbul as there are loads of other little niggly things wrong and I have my spare tire on the rear. The guy who is doing the service is away on a big bike trip in a few days, so I was never going to get there in time. My plan was always to ride as close as I could and then get the bus, which would keep the length and cost of journey down. After the last few days though I was getting more and more frustrated with the situation. The distance to the next big town was quite long and I didn't want something to finally completely fail and be stuck in between towns having to hitch back to a town to then get the bus. I decided to go to Istanbul instead of a local bike or work shop to try and free the stuck screw just in case it is not the cable but something wrong with the hub, plus the fact I can get all the other bits of work done.

So that’s the decision made and I’m fine with that. It’s a bit of a pain and if the guy wasn't going away on a big bike trip (who would do such a thing) I would probably just keep limping along to Istanbul as it is and get it fixed when I got there.

So my dilemma now is do I make the return journey back to where I am or do I just forget about the 900 k’s on the bus?

My original trip plan was just to spend a year cycling around the bits of the world which appealed to me but making my way home as I went along (see the end of the ‘reasons to go video’). This was mainly to miss out the central Asian region as initially I couldn't be bothered with all the visas hassles.  As I started cycling and met other cyclists I started to like the idea of cycling all the way back more and more, especially when I found out the visa issues wasn’t too hard to sort out with a bit of advanced planning. So the pro’s of getting the bus back is that I would have cycled all the way across mainland Asia ... from crossing from Singapore to Malaysia all the way to Istanbul. I’m probably never going to do it again so I may as well do it right. Julian and Elie, who I spent a lot of time in central Asia with, are about 400 km behind me so it will also be a good chance to meet back up and ride with them for a few days. The con’s of doing it, are it’s not exactly pleasant in Turkey at the moment, and it seems a bit pointless. As I type this, the flags outside are pointing due East, its foggy, cold and raining. Not all days are like this though but there are quite a lot of them and as the days go by there are going to be a lot more of them. It will also delay my return by a few days but then again there’s nothing to get back for anyway ... other than seeing friends and family etc. which I am looking forward to.

The philosophy of my trip (and life, lol) is ‘no turning back’, but also ‘no cheating’ (motorised transport) ... so they have come into conflict. As I write this I have pretty much decided to get the bus back (this cafe is just too good), but when I’m 4 hours into the 15, later today I’ll probably be thinking I’m not doing this again. Anyway, this is the end of my rambling, until next time.

Cheers, n