The importance of bike maintenance

When I was over on Mull during my tour of the west coast of Scotland my mate Gordon and I were heading out for a trip somewhere on the island. As you cycle out of Tobermory there is a somewhat steep hill leading out of the town. As we were climbing the hill my gears started to slip and I eventually had to stop. I discovered that one of the little bolts that holds all the chain rings together had somehow disappeared and now my large chainring was beginning to fold over. Not a good thing to happen. Fortunately, Tobermory has a bike shop. Unfortunately, the repair man had left for a holiday in Greece the day before. Bummer...!!!

So, what do you do when you are on a island with no means of getting your bike repaired? Good question. Well what I did was to dismantle my bike, stick it in the back of my car and then take a small ferry back across on to the main land. I then had to drive around 50/60 miles along a lot of single track roads to Fort William where I knew they had a bike shop. I probably spent the sum total of half an hour there before I started to head back to get the ferry to Mull. I did make a slight detour though up to the Nevis Range ski slopes where they were holding the first World Mountain Bike Downhill championships there. Even then, I got there, saw how much traffic there was and then just headed back from whence I came.

So... the moral of this tale? Well, the one thing that it taught me is that if you are going to undertake any sort of long distance or off-road biking you have to ensure your bike is in a fit state to do it. The fact that we are going to Sweden and Norway makes this doubly important since we are going to be in a strange country, possibly miles from a bike shop. Luckily we should have a support van carrying spares and tools should things go wrong but this still doesn't alter the fact that preventative maintenance is perhaps your best chance of having an incident free journey.