Papaseea Sliding Rocks - Postscript

There is a little bit more to our trip to the sliding rocks that Angela didn’t mention - that is the trip home.

After riding the 7 or so kilometres uphill for our swim we of course had a nice long downhill ride home to look forward to. The first 2 kilometres is unsealed road, which is quite steep in some places and can be a bit rough. Anyway, Angela seemed to be enjoying the descent, or maybe she had forgotten how to use the brakes. I was following her and was impressed to see her reach 40 km/h without screaming! Next thing it looked like she hit a pothole or a rock and there was a bit of a bang and finally she came to a stop with a strange rubbing noise coming from the back of her bike. Usually this is caused by her mudguard (yes, she insists on having mudguards on her bike!) having been shaken out of position and rubbing on the tyre, at worst I thought it might have been a buckled wheel. On closer inspection we found that not only was the wheel badly buckled, but that she had managed to break 2 spokes. So, after bending the broken spokes out of the way we continued on our way home, at a much slower pace.

Before we came to Samoa I stocked up on spare parts for the bikes – puncture repair kits, spare tubes, chains, oil, grease etc, but I didn’t think I would be needing to rebuild a wheel. I have never had to do this before, so I thought it might be best to find someone who knows what they are doing to do it for me. There aren’t many (any?) bike shops in Apia, but I did find a sports shop that have some bike parts and can do some repairs, but they couldn’t fix the wheel. They did give me the number of someone with their own workshop that might be able to do it, but so far I haven’t been able to get hold of him. I have had a look at my big book of mountain bike maintenance, and it makes it sound quite simple. So, maybe I will have to get some spokes sent over from NZ and have a go myself. In the meantime there will be no more mountain bike adventures.