It was coming together, fell apart, then it went from bad to excellent!

I took a  day of vacation today to get ready for Sunday's 3 month adventure with Sean. I thought everything would flow like clockwork but today was not the day!

It started out with my bike. I was getting a bit of rumbling noise from the rear derailleur and suspected that my aging derailleur was not aligned properly. So I removed the derailleur and straightened the hanger, fully expecting it to snap, considering I've straightened it several times over the last 38,000 miles of riding and they are designed to be the weakest link. Well I got it perfectly aligned and it didn't snap. Great!

Rumbling was gone but now I found I could not get the derailleur to shift over the full range. Something was wrong and despite multiple attempts to adjust it, I could not get it right. I suspected something wrong with the cables and housing but they only had 1 month of use on them.

So next step was to do a short ride with my wife Diana, her brother Don, and our friend Ben. Somehow I hoped the shifting would magically fix itself but it only got worse. Shoot, the kickoff is in 1 day & 20 hours and my bike is a mess.

Time to see the experts and run to our local bike shop. And I still haven't packed or bought all the missing equipment I was told to get to support the ride.

So as we are heading back home, I hear a huge pop and bang I have a new project! Diana hit something and gashed her tire creating an immediate blow out.

Fortunately I had with me a segment from an old tire and was able to put this inside the gashed tire with a new tube and we were back on our way. But already I'm thinking that when I get home, I need to not only get my bike running properly again but also replace Diana's tire.

Once home, I rushed over to see Bryon at Crank2  Performance and prayed he would be there and able to help. He was there  and not only did he help, but he dropped everything on his plate and went to work on my bike.

He quickly diagnosed the problem and next thing I know he's removed the cable, found some defective housing, slapped it all together and my bike is purring. I went from being near tears to total elation. Thank you Byron!

Next was a shopping spree followed by a tire replacement for Diana's bike...

.Felt like I was getting closer at this point.

Then Bruce at Concept Cyclery calls and says he is on his way to help me enable Garmin Tracking using a Garmin 1000.  Super. Saves me from driving down to Morgan Hill. As he's driving up, Talia Herman with Garmin is busy looking into Garmin tracking through social media. She finds the right resource and voila, now Sean's progress will be shown live through Facebook. Thank you Talia and Bruce. Your support of Heart Across America is invaluable!

But that's not it! I look around and find a delivery from UPS of a GoPro swivel helmet mount and a GoPro wrist mount that I only ordered only 1 day ago. Now we have the opportunity to generate some interesting video!

We're back on track.