A slight Delay...

Hi Folks!

Just wanted to give you a quick update, since it has been a while since I've posted anything out of the journal.

I arrived in St. Louis on Monday afternoon (almost a week ago), and spent the following two days visiting my Aunt Shelley and her family in Granite City, IL.

From there, I drove up to my Grandma's house in Arthur, Illinois, and spent Thursday-Saturday there.

I planned to get back on the road tomorrow morning (Sunday), but have run into a minor problem: Before I left for Arthur, I took my bike into the shop in Granite City to figure out the source of a mysterious creaking noise.

The shop figured out that the crank arm of my pedal had come undone from the axle, and needed to be replaced. The part was under warranty, so he would just charge me for labor.

Long story short, I couldn't make it back to Granite City today in time to pick up the bike before they closed, so I asked my cousin Tommy to pick it up for me. He did, and brought it home. But unfortunately, when they replaced the crank arm of the pedal, they replaced the pedals too...swapping out my really expensive Shimano clip-in pedals, for the cheap non-clip-in pedals that came standard with the new pedal crank arms. Tommy would never have known to look for that, since he wasn't familiar with my bike.

To make matters worse, the shop owner's wife had a baby today, and so the shop won't be open until Tuesday morning at 10am. I don't have any way to get in touch with the shop owners until then.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. Shelley thinks she knows where the owners live, but I feel pretty bad showing up at his house the day after his wife had a baby and asking him to give me my pedals back. On the other hand, the shop's mistake could cost me two whole days of riding--no small thing when I'm trying to get my dad home in time for school to start.

So we'll see how things pan out tomorrow. The other option would be for me to ride the bike with the cheap pedals and have Shelley pick up and mail me the good pedals on Tuesday. None of the options are perfect...and after several days of visiting family and not riding my bike, I'm feeling pretty restless and ready to roll.

That's all for now. Tonight, I'll keep working on the journal in hopes to get a few more days posted here before I leave.

Take care,
Kendal