Slept really well in my tent in the woods. In the morning I wander into he village next door, Bendougou, which is small, but just large enough to have a boutique with a lady selling “beignets” (greasy balls of fried dough), and with a thermos of hot water for some coffee. Thus I have my minimalist breakfast.

The ride to Kelimbou from there isn’t too far, so I take my time, and stop in a larger village for a proper Guinean coffee and a piece of bread. The cafe owner was even nice enough to share his potato, tomato, onion salad with me. Shaping up to be a good day. The road is pretty bad and steep, so I take my time, being careful to avoid flats. Suddenly, something catches in my pedal stroke, and before I know it, there is a tangle of shredded cable in my front chainring. My shifter housing/cable somehow got caught in with my chain.

This is a bummer, to be sure. But it’s not the end of my trip by any means. This will not be all that hard to fix. I’m of two minds about this incident. On the one hand I am kicking myself that I was not more carefully observant of my bike. I could have noticed that there was slack in the cable, or it was not routed properly. I definitely could have noticed something was off and preemptively made an adjustment. On the other hand, I got really lucky. Overall, this happened in a really good spot, I was still next to the larger village with the cafe, and was able to walk back in about 10 minutes, and hire a moto to take me and my bike to Yembering, a decent sized town only 23 km away. This could have happened somewhere much deeper in the bush.

I have friends/ a host in Yembering, and after arriving quickly find a mechanic with cable and housing. He seems to know what’s he’s doing. I suspect I’ll be back on the road tomorrow. This will change my itinerary to some extent, but in the scheme of things it’s really just a hiccup