A silly bike solution on Fuenteventura

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Bicycle mishap on Fuerteventura

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We flew from the UK to ride around the chipmunk infested desert island of Fuerteventura and we had taken our two old hybrids with us. It was early in the season so the usual numbers of tourists and tourist buses had not yet started filling up the island and we had been off exploring, looking at the island's special windmills, visiting the little churches of the little villages and seen the amazing surfing beaches. Now, towards the end of the holiday we wanted to go south to one of the best national parks and do this via eating at one of the best fish restaurants around.

This meant that we had had to ride off road over walkers paths and crumbling rocky roads all morning until we found the little inlet where the restaurant was hidden. We had a fine meal which had only recently been pulled from the Atlantic. After a good bottle of wine we decided that we would return to Costa de Antigua by a different route as “it had to be easier than the way we had come in”. The first couple of miles went well but then I suddenly could pedal no more as the whole chain mechanism had locked up. Clearing space around the bike I discovered that the whole free-wheel had unwound itself (it must have been all that bumping). The free-wheel and the gear pack had disengaged with the rear wheel and any ball bearings had mixed in with the local pebbles of the path.

After tidying up I ended up with a bag of bits and a bike with no means of propulsion. It would be dark in a couple of hours and we were 25 km from our room. Two choices, jog 25 km pushing a bike or ride one bike while towing the other (and its incumbent). We only had another 1km to push the bike to get to black top so “Let's try towing”. This is what we did
• We attached the only thing we had to tow with, a springy 3 metre long security cable, to the rear of the other usable bike.
• My partner climbed onto the rear bike and took hold of the cable and the rear brake lever
• I got onto the front bike and..
• Off we set

Well despite a certain amount of shouting and laughing we did it. In places we hit 45km/hour going down hill as I just wanted to get up the next hill without pushing (well that is what the computer said), and we only had to push up the top bits of two hills when the load just got too much. As they say “don't try this at home kids”.

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Comments

[Jon]

No sure where you were!
Hmm. There are no chipmunks on Fuerteventura! Not sure where you were!

[bilboburgler]

Chipmunks
The things are endemic to the whole island. I saw them on the beach and on the mountain tops. They seem to compete with the lizards. They were released by an American couple in the 1800s.