Sweep Day

Today I rode sweep with Jess from MIT. Sweep's job is to ride behind everyone else and make sure that everyone gets in safely. The day started out wonderfully--me and Jess stopped at Burger King for cinniminis which we ate outside of Kroger. Then we got a call from 2 riders who were lost, so we waited for them to get back to where we were and then rode away with them. After that, my pedal, which had fallen off in a previous ride, started to feel like it was going to fall off again. So, I stopped to take a look at it and realized that it was screwed on crooked. Me and Jess and Devin got the pedal off with a lot of effort, and were about to attempt to screw it on straight when a cyclist stopped to ask if we were ok. We explained what was going on and she said she would call her husband, who was a mechanic, to take a look. He came and unfortunately gave me the bad news that I was going to need a new crank because the threads on mine are completely worn down. He innovated a way to get the pedal to stay on there and we continued down the road. However, after that stop, we were so far away from the group that the van had to come pick us up to bring us to lunch. As we were leaving lunch, my chain fell off and I was getting really frustrated at that point with the ride. Then Jess and I ran into Emily and Devin who had just taken a spill on some gravel. We thought everything was ok with them, but it turns out that Emily's derailer was completely ruined, so we had to call the van once again. The van came and picked us up and took us to dinner at our host site, which is a church in Newcomerstown, Ohio. So, even though I was on the bike for about 8 hours today, I only rode about 30 miles and now I am going to the bike store tomorrow to buy a new crank. :(