What The Hell? Why?

Fair enough start leaving Bar Harbor. Chilly again, in the low 40’s with a “feels like” temperature of 36 degrees at 7:45 am.

Climbing out of Bar Harbor on Eagle Lake Road,  next to Acadia National Park, the first 6 miles were good climbs and the forecasted rain had suddenly evaporated. It would be a cloudy, chilly day but dry.

Paula had just passed me near the entrance to the park, and…

… Snap! Grind! Clang, clang, clang!

Let me explain: as you see in this photograph (below) from Thursday, during the loop shakedown ride—I got stuck carrying one of the group’s cooking pots—we share carrying Adventure Cycling’s cooking gear. Each one of us is tasked with carrying some piece of communal gear. I got one of the hated pots. It’s large, obtrusive, funky looking and just a literal pain in my ass, placed on my rear rack behind my bike seat.

See how it’s held down by two bungee cords I carry for instances that require carrying something outside the panniers?

Well, one of those cords tore in half from the strain of the stretch over the pot. Then ricocheted into my wheel, got caught in my chain and dragged into the jockey wheel mechanism on my derailieur.

This is what a normal derailieur looks like: you see the arm mechanism hanging down at 6 o’clock—it ferries the chain through the cassette and derailieur mechanism. (See above, see below).

This is how mangled my derailieur became in the incident: instead of hanging down, the steel arm was bent up and backwards into the cassette and a chain mash of metal.

I am astonished I didn’t fly over the handlebars, crash, or even fall off the bike. After a grinding halt, I looked at this mess in a daze. How is this even possible? no no no!

You can see the base of the bungee cord hook imbedded in the jockey wheel at 11 o’clock (top left).

What the hell? Why? On day three, after 6 measly miles of actually riding south, after so much time waiting for this ride to get going again.

After the daze wore off, I hired a car out of Ellsworth, and took the bike to the region’s most renown bike shop in Bangor, Maine.

Slipping Gears Cycling. After calling they said they had a derailieur replacement—the last one in stock compatible with my bike’s drivetrain.

I will say, these guys know what they’re doing. They saved my derailieur hanger—which is not easy or quick to source, and had my bike riding better than it started this trek 1,100+ miles ago in Key West, FL, back on the last day of February.

Thanks, Matt & Slipping Gears Cycling!

Luckily I had already cycled the section into Ellsworth, ME last week—and a good portion of southern Maine on the East Coast Greenway Trail last summer.

It was too late in the day to bike from Ellsworth to Bucksport, ME, where we were scheduled to camp last night. So in effect I’ll have a 40 mile gap (one day’s ride) that I’ll have to come back and complete later this year—probably in the fall.

But the good news is that I’ll meet up with the rest of the group in Belfast, ME—or thereabouts tomorrow—and continue on towards DC.

Bike Day 30: (Actually day 70 since Key West, FL)
Start: Bar Harbor, ME
End: Belfast, ME
Miles: 6.09 (Actually 1,116 miles since February 28, 2025)

Oy! What an exhausting runaround day after only biking 6 miles. Crisis averted. Let’s move on with better luck from here on out. I got all the bad luck out of the way today.

Here’s hoping!

What I’m Reading:

The long day has ended in which so much
And so little had happened.
Great hopes were dashed,
Then halfheartedly restored once again.

— Charles Simic / “Thus”