Day 81- Blackie needs repair

Day 81 Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Distance 69. 35 km. Time 4 hr. 24 min. Total so far 5612.11 km. I didn’t sleep very well last night. At 3 am. there was a whole lot of yelling and arguing . Some people in the trailers were having a domestic dispute. In the morning, we said goodbye to Wilfrid and Denise and started on the highway toward New Glasgow. The wind was in our face, my legs were tired, the road was busy, the uphills had no edges and I got run off the road again by a truck. We knew we had to do the seven hills that we had done to cross this section before. I was going down one hill at full steam and noticed Dave’s Cape Breton flag on the ground. I had to come to a fast stop to pick it up. Then it was hard to go again as I had lost all my momentum. Now he owes me two favors-one for this and one for finding him a southwester hat. After 3 hours we made it past the noisy hill that has 6 big sections of rumble strips going right across the lane. You should hear the racket from the cars and trucks as they go across them. Thank goodness they didn't extend to our little part of the highway. We finally reached the section where the new road that is not opened yet to traffic is being finished. We rode on it, just the two of us. I really wasn’t feeling well at this point so we stopped and had lunch to see if that would help me. For the last couple of days, Dave has been having trouble with his bike crank and has had to keep tightening it. When we reached New Glasgow, we headed straight to the Pictou Bicycle Shop. They found that the bottom bracket was cracked and that’s why the peddle crank couldn’t be tightened. So poor Blackie needed a new bottom bracket and crank arms and Dave was much poorer after the visit even though he supplied some of the parts. I just had the guy ride Silver in the parking lot and make minor adjustments to the gears. But it seems that what is fixed in one direction (the small chain ring falling off) is affected in another ( now the chain rubs on the derailleur). We passed a grocery store on the way out of town and should have stopped but I thought we were going all the way to Pictou today so I didn’t say anything. Dave was still upset about the bike bill. We stopped before Pictou at the Abercrombie Community Center where we set up behind the building. Later, 2 ladies walked by with their dog and shortly after a man came to check us out. We told him about our trip and he opened up the building for us to use the washroom and get water. The man had worked in Hamilton and Elliot Lake in his younger days. We slept well there.