Yesterday as I rode my bike I knew something was not working right. Last night in our wonderful $50 motel room I inspected everything carefully, and discovered the problem, my chain was running off the idler or jockey sprocket on the rear derailer or shifter. I took a picture of the sprocket with the chain off with my iPhone and sent it to Pastor Gary Schmid who is a bicycle guru. He texted back and said it looked like the sprocket had all the teeth worn off. I looked at it and sure enough there were just nubbins instead of teeth.  I googled all the bicycle shops in the area, and this morning  at 8 am I called the closest one.  An old guy answered and said he was sort of retired and didn’t go into the shop until 1 pm. I explained what we were doing and my problem and he said he would be there at 9 am. I asked if he thought he had what my bike needed, and he responded rather coldly, ” I have been fixing bicycles for 40 years and there isn’t anything I don’t know or have”. We were about 30 minutes bicycle ride from his shop so we took off and got there just before he did. He fixed it in about 10 minutes and then did a bunch of tuning and tinkering and pronounced it good as new. I asked what I owed him and he said $5, but I gave him $10. He enjoyed hearing about our adventures and talked our ear off about bicycles. He did make me a bit nervous when he got out this really big set of channel locks and started bending on the arm that held the jockey wheel declaring that I must have dropped it at some point because it wasn’t quite lined up the way it should be. I didn’t want to tell him that it had tipped over often and usually with me on it! It worked like a charm today.

we didn’t get on the road until 10 am today but we still made 74 miles. We are staying in a “Warm Shower” host home tonight in Zanesville, Indiana. The weather today was wonderful and we are hoping for more tomorrow. We move into Ohio tomorrow.

love you all. Dee