Starting down the Cassiar, it seemed like everything was breaking down. We felt tired (even though we'd just taken a couple of days off at Watson Lake) and didn't seem like we were making the distance we expected. And it seemed like it was raining and cold every day. We were starting to get worried that we were going to "blow out" and get too discouraged to continue, as we've all seen happen with big tours before.

And then approaching Dease Lake in a horrible dirt-road section I broke a spoke in my rear wheel. We spent a day cleaning up and repairing and resupplying, and then spent a couple more days resting in Telegraph Creek.

But the day we started out again on the Cassiar, I immediately broke ANOTHER spoke. This time, the spoke was one of the harder ones to replace and I had to use a special Hypercracker tool to try to get the cassette off the wheel. I broke the Hypercracker right away. We tried to use it several other ways, but completely failed. The Hypercracker was destroyed and my spoke was still broken. We started looking for alternatives, but found none. We asked everybody we met as I wobbled by on my bike whether they might know somebody with some bike tools. We failed until meeting Johann at Tatogga Lake, who told us he had what we needed at his house in Stewart 225 miles away (and on our planned route). So we kept going, figuring we'd hitchhike if it all blew up. But we made it to Stewart and got the wheel fixed and it seems like it will be OK!

So the bike is better and after the rests we had at Telegraph Creek and Stewart we feel all better and healthy and happy with what we're doing!