Day 133: Ipsala - Alexandropouli(56km) - Distance travelled so far 7,894 km "Disaster strikes for Brians bike"
Ipsala is a small town 5 kms from the border and unfortunately it did not have any bike shops so Brian decided it would be best to try and get to Alexandropouli in Greece where he hoped he could find a decent bike shop.
It was quiet the ordeal to cross the border with a crocked bike. There was a good 3kms of walking to get to the greek side. The nearest town was 15kms away and there was no public transport. So we spent an hour at the border begging any passers by to give Brian a lift to Feres.
When Brian finally found a sympathetic pick up driver he hit the jackpot. The driver was from Alexandropouli but offered to driver Brian to the near by Feres to see if they could fix the bike and if that did not work out he would drive him to Alexandropouli.
We did not stop in Feres for very along as the bike shop mechanic quickly informed us that we would have to go to Alexandropouli as he did not have the tools.
So Brian headed for Alexandropouli and arranged to meet Paul there in a few hours
Brian crosses the border on foot
Entering Greece and the EU
The very green countryside of north Greece
Brian was directed to the best bike mechanic in town named John. After quiet alot of persuasion John finally opened the hub to inspect the damage and quickly discovered that the bearing rings were broken and the axel treads badly worn.
A break through, we had finally found the problem but the wheel was still determined to cause Brian as much touble as possible. The axel and bearings needed to be replaced but unfortunately the bikes we have are not like normal mountain bikes. Our bikes have 36 spokes as opposed to 32 and so the hubs are different. John did not have the parts available to repair it so he recommended that Brian head to Thessaloniki where they would have much bigger bike shops and would surely be able to fix his wheel.
Thessaloniki is 300kms from Alexandropouli. We had planned to pass through there by bike and had arranged couch surfing there while in Istanbul so we contacted our CS host and informed her that we would be arriving 2 days early. She had no problem with it so we got a bus the next day and arrived in Thessaloniki in the evening..
