The eternal struggle with spare parts

After leaving TMB, I continued to the small town of Bourg-Saint-Maurice. With Les Arcs, Val d'Isere, and Trois Vallees, some of France's most famous ski resorts were nearby, and the Little Saint Bernard Pass allowed quick access to Aosta Valley as well. However, my main goal here was to update my equipment to be well-prepared for the upcoming longer bikepacking stages. But it wasn't as easy as I expected.

On such a long tour, it's inevitable that equipment parts break or wear out and need to be replaced. In the middle of Europe, this should be easy, or so I thought. However, it's different when you need to find a replacement part in a small mountain village in the middle of nowhere, compared to having numerous well-equipped sports stores in Munich. One classic example is gas cartridges. The small 100-gram cartridges are ideal for transport during the tour, but they only last for three days, and it's unpredictable if there will be a resupply at the next support point. In Switzerland, I was able to find an elegant solution through research, as a sports retailer delivered them to the branches of a supermarket chain for pick-up, allowing me to strategically pre-order them. Just before the border, however, the first more complex problem arose - the days of my sleeping mat were numbered.

At first, I wondered why I hadn't noticed this practical headrest for the inflatable mat before. Then it became clear - the air chambers had burst. This caused the mat to lose air over time, resulting in me having to wake up every two hours during the night to inflate it again. Replacement was urgently needed. And not just any mat, but it had to be ultralight to fit in my bags. In fact, there are only two models on the market, and I needed it in the right size as well. Unfortunately, even online, it wasn't possible to determine if something like this could be found in Bourg-Saint-Maurice. And due to delivery times, shipping only made sense from a French retailer. So, days before, I delved into internet shops in Courmayeur, struggling with a foreign language that I wasn't proficient in until I had a suspicion of finding the right one and sent it by express courier to an accommodation I had booked in advance, hoping it would arrive there on the day of my arrival. It was all doable, but logistically not that easy.

In the end, it all worked out quite well. Through a combination of online ordering and local specialty shops, I received my sleeping mat just-in-time and successfully replaced a whole range of wear and tear items for cycling, such as tires, chain, and brake discs. So, I thought I was ready to tackle the next stages. But then I noticed that the crank on the pedals was running somewhat unevenly. After some inspection and consultation with local mechanics, it turned out that there is a bottom bracket in the crank and it needed to be replaced. It's now one of the biggest annoyances for me when cycling that too many components are not standardized, and there are countless variations depending on the manufacturer. This also applies to wear and tear parts like this bottom bracket. I visited all the mechanics, but none of them had the right part for my bike. It was hopeless. Together with one of these mechanics, I finally searched the specialty shops to have the presumably fitting bottom bracket shipped to the next major stage destination, Briançon. The worn-out bottom bracket should still hold up for a while, and hopefully, it will survive the almost 6000 meters of altitude until then.

Before continuing the journey, I wanted to spend another day exploring the bike park in Les Arcs because there was a well-known top trail called La Varda that I couldn't ignore. After some beautiful Enduro descents in the ski resort as a start, La Varda would fill the second half of the day and lead into the unexplored sides of the Savoie Alps. Technically demanding, the trail truly met all my expectations, taking me through the National Park Vanoise, sometimes flowy, sometimes steep and exposed, until it almost led me back to my campsite. Only the persistent clattering of my bottom bracket reminded me time and time again that something wasn't right.