I started the day by visiting Walmart for food and McDonalds for breakfast.

I noticed a broken spoke in my front wheel while undoing my lock at McDonalds. I think it’s possible I broke the spoke by trying to roll the bike with the lock installed. I have done that several times during this trip. However it broke right at the bend, so there could have been another cause. Sometimes if spokes aren’t tight enough they will flex at the bend every time that spoke is supporting the weight of the bike. This flexing may eventually cause the spoke to fail.

I decided to wait for the expected afternoon rain to replace it with one of the spares I carry.

I abandoned my plan to wait for the rain, because riding with the broken spoke bugged me. I found a bike path tool stand which had a pump, shade and a bench and decided to replace the spoke there.

Replacing the spoke didn’t take long. I just tuned it up by sound to approximate tension of neighboring spokes. The wheel isn’t perfectly true, but it should get me home if I don’t find time to fine tune it.

I always let the air out of a tire when changing spokes. I’m afraid that turning the nipple when under pressure of an inflated tube may cause damage to the rim tape and puncture the tube.

The pump at the tool stand didn’t hold much pressure, which didn’t surprise me. I have found in the past those pumps don’t work well. I finished pumping with my frame pump. It’s not up to the 100 pounds I like on the road, but it will do for now. So much for getting my air pressure topped off at REI yesterday.

I met several long distance bike packers today. A couple of young fellows are doing the Northern Tier, plus some extra legs.

A 30 year old Chinese fellow has already done Tibet and Nepal. Unfortunately he couldn’t get a visa to get into India. He is now going from NYC to the west coast. From there he wants to go south all the way through South America. What a challenge he has in front of him.

The Erie Canal has been enlarged and rerouted several times. Here are some pictures of some abandoned fragments.

I was almost through Syracuse when I started to think that this may be the first strange city I’ve gone through without making an errant turn. Of course as soon as I thought that I missed a turn.

Eighty eight miles to Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville , New York. Over half way along the Erie Canal Trail, too. Not bad for a day that had a forecast of all day rain, just a couple of days ago. It sprinkled a bit early and I got rained on with less than ten miles to go, but it stopped by the time I got to my campsite.