Dec 31: Bodhgaya, and Chain woes(part 2 of 2)

All morning I had been riding with my fixed chain on the middle
chainring, and that had slowed me down. I'm a medium cadence rider, so
got the chain fixed to the largest chainring at Dohi and road
uninterrupted till Aurangabad, 60km away.

Reached Aurangabad just before sunset, but not before I had pushed the
bike for the last kilometer or so. Why? The chain had mysteriously
developed a tendency to slip off the rear cog.

Had no problem getting a room at hotel Sona. Clean and inexpensive(120
rupees). Then set about repairing the bike. The chain was too loose
and so slipping off. So I pushed the rear axle back. Perfect tension
in the chain. Then I started riding it - khat khat sound. Bad bad -
three chain links had broken off. I tried repairing the chain myself,
but ran into more bad luck - my chain tool's thread wore off,
rendering it useless.

At this point, a local enthusiastic kid took over. With a hammer, a
pin, a nut and an iron block he put the chain back in shape. The last
link was a bit tight and the crank wouldn't turn freely. But the kid
was eager to ride! So that broke one more link - all time spent on
this wasted by haste. I have run out of spare links. So now only
option is to wait for the shops to open tomorrow :-( that also means I
can't reach Varanasi, 160km away, tomorrow evening. Ah! These
unreliabilities...

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