DAYS 4 TO 8 – WOODEND – LANCEFIELD, ABORTED RIDE

I was heading for a 33 mile ride to Lancefield, but ran into mechanical issues going up the first hill out of Woodend.

It sounded like free hub creaking, I couldn’t believe it as I just had the bloody thing serviced and the wheel rebuilt to avoid this very problem in England just before coming to Australia.

Now the problem was to find a cycle workshop that specialized in such a thing. Servicing this type of free hub isn’t something any LBS can do.

I started off at the local Woodend LBS but that was shut Sundays and Mondays.

A search of yellow pages on yellowpages.com.au showed some specialists further afield. The next day I was due to go down to the surf coast so I looked for places near there (Anglesea, Torquay and Geelong).

Goldcross Cycles

I found a place called Goldcross cycles just out of Geelong that was on the way down there. Sounded ideal! Upon arriving they seemed pretty confident they could take the job on.

I explained that I was on a cycling holiday and they said they would get it fixed the next day. However when I rang the next day, they hadn’t had time to look at it and would do it the day after.

So, the 3^rd day they had the wheel, I rang up again and asked if it was done. “Yes, all ready for you” was the enthusiastic response. So I made the not-so-short trip to Geelong to pick up the wheel, only to be told “Ah, we haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

By now I was pretty cheesed off and explained that someone had told me it was ready, and his helpful explanation was “Ah yeah I’ve done all the other wheels, but never got round to doing yours”. I was wondering if this was Bridgetown Barbados, not Geelong Vic?

I was thinking about the movie “Desparado” with the bar sign saying “The customer is always wrong”!

So, onto day 4 they had the bike. This time they rang me to say they had taken off the cassette to realize they couldn’t service it, as they did not stock the necessary parts (bearings and cups). It takes about 5 seconds to remove a cassette and this could have been done on the spot on day 1. I’ve wasted 3 days with these guys but they did at least point me at another shop that might be able to help.

When I get a scanner I must put in here the fag-packet diagram of instructions the guy gave me to get to De Longhi cycles – It’s quite something. But I got there in the end. It’s a lottery navigating through a foreign city that you don’t know with a crappy diagram to go on and a misbehaving satnav designed for hand-held usage.

Berretas Bike Hub

De Longhi cycles, located opposite Geelong’s Kardinia Park Football stadium, were not able to fix the wheel before New Year, but were very helpful and rang another shop called Berretas bike hub and fixed me up for a repair the next day.

Berretas really knew what they were doing and sourced the replacement parts and had the wheel done the next day. They also gave me back the old components in a bag – I’ve never had a bike shop do that before.

So days 4 to 8 were lost, but onto day 9 where there was just time to get a ride in before the fading light.

Day 5 we arrived in Anglesea. This was the day I dropped the wheel into Goldcross cycles.

Day 6 was 32C, a perfect beach day.

Day 7 was 39C, with an unbelievably hot wind. There’s no way I would have cycled this day. It was pretty nice down the beach though, until the wind got up too much!

Day 8 rained all day. I wouldn’t have gone out.