Great Divide ride - days 3-4 (Ted)

July 15th - It has been a couple of days since my last confession and about 100 miles down the road... And back in the USA in Eureka, MT.

After spending the night at the Elkford Municipal campground, I was up early still trying to figure out my clicking pedal crank.  It was pretty clear it was the bottom bracket (bearing assembly that the shaft of the pedal crank goes through).  This is a bike I put together just a few months ago, so I an surprised I have had so many issues.  The rear hub failed on day 1 of my 10 day NM ride and now to have a bottom bracket fail with maybe 2000 miles is odd.

So I turned to the all knowing internet and sure enough I found numerous complaints about  Sram GXP bottom bracket early failures.  Since I was up early, I packed up, stopped in at a local truck stop diner where I got hear several local Candians say,  " don't cha' know, aye".  Good to hear some local Canadians since most of the service employees in Jasper and Banff are from Australia on special work visas.

Anyway, it was a pretty quick 45 mile pedal on all paved roads to Fernie, where I dropped of my stuff at the Red Tree Lodge bike room and then headed to Gearhub, a local bike shop that had good reviews on Google. In this case Google did not lie.  I talked to the senior bike mechanic (and I am guessing part owner) and he quickly confirmed that the Sram bottom bracket is a known problem and may be why he had one in stock.  He had a pretty good supply of both Sram and Shimano parts, so it is probably just a good bike shop. It was noon on a busy Friday, but they assured me they thought they could get it replaced and ready for me at 9AM on Saturday.  And true to their word it was ready when I went back a few minutes after 9.

The whole time in the small ski/mountain bike town of Fernie was good.  The Red Tree Lodge was older but well kept with free laundry machines, a room just for bikes and gear, a lounge room with couches to hang out while I waited for my room to be ready, and very nice staff.  I ate in a couple of different places and both were really good and reasonably priced for a ski town.  So all in all, I would give Fernie two thumbs up.

So back on the bike again, I was headed for the US boarder.  I passed a group from Adventure Cycling who left 2 days before me and are now a day behind me.  I also ran into the group of 3 who were leaving from Banff when I started.  We met at the Roosville border crossing.  Unlike Canada that allows cyclists to walk into the border crossing office we had to wait in line with the cars. While we were chatting in line they mentioned that all 3 had expired passports, so I asked if I could go first, just in case they got held up. They said no problem, but it really didn't matter.  The boarder patrol let them thru with only a chiding about getting their passports renewed.

Kevin, the "Dad" of the group had done some research once they realized they had expired passports and found that when you are a US citizen crossing into the US on land with an expired passport, the boarder patrol has no legal reason to stop you.  You can't fly into the US from Canada, but you can roll in.

Anyway, they continued on toward Glacier National Park, while I decided that 61 miles was enough and stopped at the Eureka city park to camp for the night.

I spent most of the evening chatting with Austin who is camped in the park and hiking the Pacific NW trail or trading texts with Beth about the battery in the Geo dying and she had to call AAA for a jump start in Glendive, MT... Yet another issue with towing a vehicle behind the RV, but she handled it well.