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  • So do I.

    Any ideas what to do if that would have happened at midnight?

    It's a question that gets asked a lot on the audax forum in YACF and there are always a lot of helpful solutions and bodges that get suggested. The bottom line though is that when you get to the level of audaxing that takes you outside of "usual business hours", you have to be prepared for the fact that you may experience catastrophic mechanical failure or similar. It's not so much what you have to do in response that gets to people but the fact that it has happened in the first place.

    Of course, once it has happened, you are left with three options;

    1) Effect a repair with the resources that you have available. Zip-ties on freewheels, duct tape, coke cans and inner tubes on broken frames, bits of slender branch in snapped handlebar. I've seen some pretty creative stuff.

    2) Call for help. Taxis, friends, family, anyone who can be persuaded to haul your bedraggled ass off a curb and take it home. Of course when you're many miles away from home in the middle of nowhere this option rarely presents itself.

    3) Head for cover until it becomes easier to do 1) or 2) Phone booths, grit bins, church foyers, unlock garages, barns, railway station platforms are among the many places used. Some have blagged their way into closing pubs to sleep on the floor or warehouses. All depends on what you're prepared to do really. As a last resort you can just walk although after a while, sleeping under hedges becomes a very attractive prospect.

    The mantra, as ever, is "it's just a bike ride". The risk of getting stranded in the boonies and having to rely on luck and the generosity of strangers is all part of the happy adventure. If all this sounds a bit much then it may be that longer audaxing isn't for you. Instances of being stranded are mercifully rare and oddly seem to happen to those of the best disposition to deal with them though.

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