Day 66, July 2 - Shymkent Fix Bicycle Day

0km - 4390km, hot 35C, light wind, 0 shots, 0 sauna, 0 Lenin, Hotel

Today's mission was to get my rear wheel fixed up well enough that I could continue on the trip. Ideally, I would keep the same axle/hub/tire/tube and just get a new steel rim with some more solid spokes. Ideally. The first stop was at the large bazaar where, after a few minutes of looking around, I managed to find the bicycle section. One guy had a good back rim and would charge me $10 to fix it, and so I left my wheel with him for a couple of hours and walked around town. Found a good internet cafe and typed away for a few hours, and then went to find some more specialized bicycle shops (haha!). Finding nothing (but delicious shashlik), I decided to head back to the bazaar to check on progress. Sadly, the guy had not been able to even start because he didn't have the Shimano key to remove the cog set. (Note to all bicycle tourers - bring the cog set key because shops in many countries won't have it and then you are up shit creek!)

I walked back to the hotel to get my key and passed an actually bike shop en route. Went in and noticed that the owner had a better back rim and better spokes. He wanted more money for the job, but I trusted his craftsmanship more so I went with him. Retrieved the wheel from the bazaar, dropped it off at the bike shop, went to the hotel to retrieve my Shimano key, new cog set and chain whip (all needed), and headed back to the shop. I sat with the technician helping him strip my old shitty spokes from the wheel and then watched as he quickly built the new wheel. We put on the new cog set and, voila, I had a working (yet untried and untested) tire!

I decided to celebrate my victory over the AlexRims bicycle manufacturing company with some beer, so I headed back to the hotel and ran into a Czech cyclist who had just come from Brno and was heading to India via Tibet (a plan that he would later in the day find impossible due to current Chinese Tibet visa regulations). Down to the cafe we went and swapped stories about cycling on the road (e.g. "When I was sky diving off Madagascar with the Brazilian air force" ...) We then headed back to the I-cafe so we could Skype and Blog away for a couple of hours. I finished up earlier and headed to a nearby cafe for (guess what!) some more shashlik. We then went into the park to one of the few nightspots in town and listened to the Kazakh/Russian/Uzbek band slap away while a few cougars and mougars moved awkwardly around the open air dance floor. We were fortunate enough to run into a Kazakh economist studying at New York University, and had a few hours of good conversation about the economy and history of the 'stans. Even managed to get a free ride home with him and his personal driver. Score!