{"id":860,"date":"2010-02-14T10:55:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T15:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/?p=860"},"modified":"2012-05-29T18:16:16","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T23:16:16","slug":"cracketerra-aluminal-breaking-my-aluminum-frame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/cracketerra-aluminal-breaking-my-aluminum-frame\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracketerra Aluminal &#8211; breaking my aluminum frame!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just before we were growing fins and flippers to adapt to the daily wet ride in the rain on Day 6 (from Coyhaique) we turned East in Villa Santa Lucia to get over to Futualeufu and finally to the much drier Argentinean side of the mountains. This was a typical road for the Carreterra Austral, one-lane gravel with washboard and some potholes, one just has to go slow here. In some spots I need to push the bike, as it&#8217;s too steep for me to ride here.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Carreterra\/PushingUphill.JPG\" alt=\"Pushing my recumbent uphill on a steep section towards Futualeufu (Photo courtesy of Wolfgang Butz)\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Then after 50km or so, as I ride slowly uphill, I all of a sudden feel a weird, soft swinging sensation, almost as if going through specially designed washboard waves or the onset of a flat rear tire? All of a sudden, I feel like sinking lower and the bike stops cold. I have trouble preventing tipping over sideways. I stand up and look at the bike. No flat tire. What&#8217;s going on? Then I see the damage: My frame broke at the rear fork! Here are some photos:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Carreterra\/CrackedFrame1.JPG\" alt=\"Crack in rear fork of aluminum frame\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Carreterra\/CrackedFrame2.JPG\" alt=\"Crack in rear fork of aluminum frame - photo 2\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" src=\"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Carreterra\/CrackedFrame3.JPG\" alt=\"Crack in rear fork of aluminum frame - photo 3\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Must have been material fatigue after some 40,000 km during the second go-around on the Panamerican Highway! While I&#8217;m not happy about this, I am happy that it didn&#8217;t occur at high speeds going downhill&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A friendly Chilean motorist took me the remaining 25 km to Futualeufu, where I knew I could stay the night and then tried to figure out how to continue by bus to Esquel, the nearest town of reasonable size. I took a bus that same evening to Esquel, crossing the border into Argentina, finally seeing the sun for the first time in 6 days, which felt indescribably good (similar to how I felt about my first hot meal after coming down from Denali).<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately there is only one serious bike mechanic in Esquel and he determined that he couldn&#8217;t fix this aluminum frame break. So I took a bus to Bariloche, where I found a very good mechanic. Now I&#8217;m waiting for the replacement frame part to get shipped from the Dutch manufacturer Challengebikes. Let&#8217;s hope this won&#8217;t take too long&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just before we were growing fins and flippers to adapt to the daily wet ride in the rain on Day 6 (from Coyhaique) we turned East in Villa Santa Lucia to get over to Futualeufu and finally to the much drier Argentinean side of the mountains. This was a typical road for the Carreterra Austral, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tlausser.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}