After I met up with my friend Mika, who lives near Biarritz in a small town called Arbonne, my bike was in shambles and unridable. My initial plan was to come see Mika for a few days and then head east, but that’s not how it played out.
The day after I showed up with my busted bike, Mika patiently drove me to 5 different bike shops in the area looking for someone who could fix a DT Swiss 240s rear freehub. This hub is supposedly the most popular hub on the market and easily serviceable, but that didn’t seem to be the case in the Biarritz, France area (the star ratchet inside the hub needed to be replaced). So after a lot of bike shop investigation, I finally decided to order the part online from Bike24, which was an excellent company to me (although my initial attempt to purchase had a failed credit card authorization and somehow I didn’t get notified of that). I didn’t discover that until I called in to check on my late “next day” order. Once the transaction was authorized my order came next day to Mika’s. All told it took 9 days to a path to getting my bike to work again.
This made me feel a few things: 1) Fortunate that this happened when I was visiting Mika. I would have had a much harder time solving this problem without having a good friend pulling for me. He drove me places, hosted me for free in his apartment, gave me a bike to borrow, and made a bunch of phone calls for me to French speaking bike shops. If I were on my own without a bike that worked, gosh that would really suck. I was really lucky to have a good friend to help me through this. 2) Anxious. I was really uncomfortable staying so much longer at Mika’s than I initially proposed and no matter what he said to reassure me it was OK to stay there, I felt badly about it. I was also feeling like I was on the clock, wasting my precious 90 day travel visa and concerned about getting out of Schengen before it ran out. It was quite unnatural for me to just sit and wait for things I can’t control. 3) Spoiled. Amazon in France is much different than in America and I was so accustomed to Amazon next day delivery of basically anything for the past few years, it was quite hard for me to revert back to a pre-Amazon world where things just take longer. I am a spoiled American consumer over here, and frankly, I missed that.
Slowing down
The silver lining of the bike dilemma was that I got to hang out with Mika and his partner Elsa (who is 6 months pregnant with their baby girl), and his mountain boarding friends.
Mika recently bought a 200 year old farm house in Monein, France that needed A LOT of work before he moved in. He organized a “remodel weekend” with his mountain boarding friends: Guillaume, Vincent and Laurent.
We were quite productive and had a lot of fun. This was the most manual labor I’ve done since I worked on a Habitat for Humanity house in high school and I was reminded of how gratifying hard work can feel at the end of the day when you can so visibly see the fruits of your labor.
A few days after Mika and I came back to Arbonne my much anticipated bike parts arrived.
Old parts 
Replacement kit 
The teeth on this rachet were damaged, making my bike unridable
After a few hours of repairing my bike, I was in a good place to get rolling again, and I was really excited for that. The next day I packed up my bags and said goodbye to Mika and Elsa. I hope to come back to their farmhouse and meet their daughter sometime soon!
Headed to Switzerland now!