Such a quiet start to the day. I had planned a route back to Lisbon with the 5 days before my hotel booking there. It's about 500km from Santa Cruz so I was going to be working but nothing crazy. There were two days after today with some serious climbing. My watch has been saying to take a day off but that's not going to happen. We got deadlines to meet here, people!
Today was to be an easy day to stage the next two harder days. Then over the mountains and back near the way I came from Portugal to Spain. Judging by the lack of spring in my legs today that was going to be some work.
Today was straight up the road from the hotel to Cordoba, some suburbs and west out of town. I regretted not getting to spend time in a city I have fond memories of. Too many tourists, anyway.
Today's scenery did not come close to yesterday's. The road had the nice 1+ meter shoulder so I could ignore the traffic. Pleasant rolling hills and farmland. Pretty but not like yesterday. Less olive groves and more something else; no idea what.
I was on bicycle paths as much as possible in Cordoba and was only barely in the city. I took the road to Seville and was moving along at a good clip. With about 20km to go I thought I rode over a stone and it made a terrible noice. I was concerned about my tire but is seemed ok. I did notice that when I coasted my chain was grabbing. There was a bad noise when this happened. A few times when I pedaled the chaing slipped.
I took a little break at a gas station outside Posadas. I lubed the chain and everything looked ok.
The last 20km had a lot of chain jumping around and grabbing while coasting. There were a few more slips too. It became very clear I was not going to make it over the mountains the next two days with this issue. Discussing with my Toronto support team, we think the freehub is broken.
I checked into my hotel and started make alternate plans. In this situation you want to be near a city with services and that was Cordoba behind me and Seville ahead of me. I cancelled tomorrow hotel and started looking for bike shops in the Seville direction. Even if this detour works perfectly I am still basically a day behind.
I contacted a shop 3/4 of the way to Seville and discussed over WhatsApp my problem. I'm heading straight there in the morning. I should be there before or around noon unless I'm walking.
I did have a decent lunch in town after cleaning up. Hopefully they will be open in the morning for coffee when I ride out.
8:27pm and the sun has just gone below the houses across the street. Time to collect my laundry - I went full hillbilly at this place - finish this up and go to bed.
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