Day 40 Penonomé to Panama City

94 miles

Thanks to Yesterday’s 212 mile push despite my ongoing stomach issues, today, I was left with only 95 miles into Panama City. I wanted to ensure that I was to the city before 1:00. My flight to Columbia left at 7:30 in the evening and I needed to get my bike serviced, I had to pick up some packages that I sent myself, get a taxi to the airport, clear security, and get onto my plane. Six hours seem to be more than enough time for this, but I can never be so sure, and missing my flight would’ve been absolutely disastrous. Originally I was planning on staying the night in Panama City and flying to Columbia in the morning. When my frame cracked it completely derailed my itinerary. For the past week I’ve been trying to hit a predetermined number of miles each day to line up my arrival to Panama City so the timing of flights and mechanic services would work out perfectly. I had sent myself some packages at a hotel in Panama City and they were holding them for me. One of my packages was a new Garmin watch charger since mine was taken /lost in Mexico. If my Garmin cycling computer dies, my watch will be how I can verify my forward progress since it also has GPS tracking. I also have a new kit waiting for me from Black Sheep. As fantastic as Black Sheep bibs are, as with any bib they get worn out over time. For the first 7,500 miles of this trip I have been rotating between two pairs of bibs. Both are now very worn out so having two new pairs waiting for me is fantastic. I was also expecting a new HED wheel after my old one was cracked in Queretaro. However, upon arriving to the hotel, only my kit and charger was there. The wheel has been held in customs, and I will not be receiving it. I will have to press onto Ushuaia, with only an aluminum wheel which will work, but it’s definitely slower. I wanted to send all of these things to bike shop, but the bike shop was being incredibly difficult. As nice as Panama City is, they’re only seems to be one high end shop downtown. Working with the shop has been incredibly difficult. For months I have been trying to coordinate with them and explain to them my situation. At first, they refused to do any expedited service for me and told me I would have to wait in queue as soon as I got to the shop which might take several days. Eventually, I got them to agree to service me upon walking into the door, but they then refused to allow me to ship anything to the store. Last week I messaged them explaining that I’d been hit by a truck and they still refused to allow me to send any parts to the store. They wouldn’t even allow me to ship a TIME frame to the store after mine cracked. This turned out not to be an option anyways, but it’s ridiculous that they wouldn’t even consider this. Last week I messaged them and told them that my expected arrival would be on Monday. Then, after my frame cracked, I messaged him again, explaining that I would be delayed by two days. This was all last week. When I texted them this morning, telling them that as I had told them before, I would be at the shop around 12 to 1. They replied that since I had originally told them I was going to be on the shop on Monday, they couldn’t guarantee that they could help me today. Obviously, getting my bike serviced and boxed for the fight today was of paramount importance. I’d already bought my plane ticket. After about an hour of back-and-forth arguing with them on WhatsApp, they finally agreed that they would change my shift cables and package the bike in a box, but they refused to do the other work that they had already agreed to do on my bike. They said that they did not have enough time. Both of my wheels have tubes in right now. I’ve kind of stopped talking about all the flats I get because there’s no point in talking about it anymore and as I explained yesterday I don’t really get riled up over them anymore, I just accept changing them as a chore. However, I’ve been getting a ton of flats recently. I had two this morning alone. It was incredibly important that I get new tires on and get back to a tubeless setup. Putting on new tires, throwing in sealant, and inflating the tires would take less than 10 minutes. In the amount of time they spent arguing with me about it on ‎WhatsApp and they could’ve changed my tires over. When I got to the shop, I tried again, and even offered to do it myself. It’s incredibly easy and would’ve taken me less than 10 minutes to do. I didn’t even need their help, I just needed to buy some tires and sealant from them. They refused to let me behind the counter or work on my own bike. I’ve never been to a shop that is so difficult. There was one nice lady and one nice man who are trying to help me, but seemingly every other employee in the shop was rude and insufferable. It’s very uncharacteristic of what I’ve come to expect from bike shops. I don’t think I’m hot stuff or deserving of top end service just because I’m going for a record, but at the same time, you would think they would be a little bit more understanding of how important this is to me. When I crossed the threshold of their store in downtown Panama City I just became the fastest person to ever bike across the length of North America from north to south. I literally set a world record at the doorstep of the store, and they were treating me like I didn’t even deserve their effort as mechanics. All the other stores I’ve been to on my trip has been incredibly helpful and understanding and I’ve given them a shout outs because they deserve it and they have gone along way to making sure that I am still riding. It’s only fair that I dox this store for actively making things hard for me. If you ever find yourself in Panama City my advice that you look elsewhere for service. RALI Store is full of high-end bikes, and I have no doubt that they have skilled mechanics who are capable of fixing your bike, but if you value customer service at all or friendly people, I suggest you go elsewhere. RALI store seems to cater to incredibly wealthy individuals who like to ride the nicest bikes available even if they only ride them on the Greenway. It was very clear to me that the wealthy businessman in the store at the same time as I who are clearly not serious cyclists, but were ready to spend considerable amounts of money on a new bike, took priority over my gringo self. Again, I don’t expect special treatment, but their a little stunt about not being able to service me even though they had already agreed to could’ve cost me dearly if they had fallen through with that. It just added anxiety and stress to a day that was already filled with anxiety and stress over my flight.

A quick note on the logistics and technical legality of sending myself packages during this attempt. Those well-versed in the rules surrounding unsupported versus supported versus self-supported attempts will realize that me sending myself packages immediately disqualifies myself from an unsupported attempt. I am now considered self-supported. However, this is nothing new. Completing the Pan-American in an unsupported fashion is practically impossible. Nobody has ever done it before. The rules of an unsupported attempt are incredibly strict, and I actually disqualified myself from an unsupported attempt in the first couple of days of my trip without even realizing it. On day 2 a photographer took a picture of me, and then introduced himself to me. According to the unsupported rules, if somebody takes a picture of you, you were disqualified from continuing unsupported. Photographs and videos from other people are considered emotional support. I think this rule is a little bit ridiculous, but it is the rule nonetheless. Again on Day 7 I disqualified myself when I accepted a free soda from a food truck. I paid the lady via Venmo a couple days later, but I don’t think that counts. That is technically a form of support. I am only allowed to accept services that are publicly available for all in an unsupported attempt. I have been taking a lot of selfies with locals, particularly through Mexico. Every time someone took a picture of me that would be considered emotional support. When my frame cracked and I had to get a new bike, that also disqualified me from an unsupported attempt. Every time my dad has sent me information about the route, or helped me book a hotel for the night, that is considered a violation of the unsupported rules. Luckily, this changes nothing for me. There is no unsupported Pan-American record. There is a solo record and a supported record. I am trying to break both of them, but my attempt is classified as a solo record. I am not receiving full support, but I also do not qualify as unsupported. I believe I am still considered self-supported. I have not taken any services that are not publicly available, except for the free soda that I accepted outside of Watson Lake in British Columbia, and I do not think that changes anything for me. I know for a fact that the two solo record holders both accepted free things on their attempts. On this one technicality, I may not be considered self supported, but it really does not matter. In the end, I do not care who says what about my record. I just want to bike to Ushuaia faster than anyone else has done it in history. People can debate the logistics of my ride, or the legalities technicalities all they want.

When I got to the hotel where I was to pick up my packages the workers wouldn’t let me inside. This was a very nice hotel. My dad had wanted a place that spoke a little bit of English to make the package pickup coordination a little bit easier. Recall that I still don’t have a shirt and I was walking around in just my bibs and sandals. I looked absolutely awful and smelled the part and then some. I don’t really blame them for not letting me inside. I sat on the curb under the carport while some of the workers went inside to bring me out my packages. One of the workers politely told me to move further away from the lobby door. I thought this was absolutely hilarious. I look and smell so wretched I was a threat to their customers simply by sitting 20 feet from the lobby. I got my packages and headed out.

When I returned to the bike shop after picking up my kit and charger, I was a little disturbed to see how they packaged my bike. They hadn’t even taken the handlebars off, they just turned them to the side, and the side of the box was protruding. They clearly had been very lazy about packaging it up. I had to redo it a bit. The box was also already falling apart. The guy had thrown a bunch of parts in the bottom floating around freely, and there are huge holes in the box which these parts were obviously going to fall out of. I was pretty upset with them, but I didn’t show it because it wasn’t going to help. I ended up doing most of it on my own despite their attempts to prevent me from working on my own bike. They wouldn’t let me use any of their tools which was incredibly frustrating. For months, I have been planning Panama City as a complete overhaul of my bike. The shop had agreed to change out my cassette and front chain rings. I wanted to go into South America with a fresh drivetrain. My rear shifter is also busted and I’m afraid it’s going to give out. They had agreed to change that as well. I was incredibly frustrated with them, but I couldn’t do anything about it and there were no alternative shops that I could arrange in such a short period of time.

I got my bike packed up, finally. I grabbed my cardboard box and hailed a taxi to the airport. The bike box wouldn’t fit inside of the car so we had to strap it under the roof. It was only 10 miles to the airport, but the traffic was so bad that it took an hour and a half to get there. I had to cross back over the Panama Canal and the bridge over the Cana has only two lanes in each direction. It’s a major choke point which creates traffic throughout the entire city because the main roads get backed up for miles. While we were waiting in traffic it started pouring rain. I knew that the cardboard box was not going to fare well. When I got to the airport and inspected the damage, I saw that the box had little more structure than a wet rag. It wasn’t going to do anything to protect the bike. I wrapped the entire box in a thin plastic, but this did nothing to enhance the structural integrity of the box, and only functioned to keep the cardboard from completely falling apart. There wasn’t much for me to do. I gave it to one of the workers and asked them to please take good care of it. I was flying out of a tiny airport, and my flight was the only flight left for the day. That gave me some solace that the worker would personally look out for my package. When I went through security they confiscated my multi tool. I tried to argue with them, but the lady wasn’t having it. Two of my bike bags were also flagged through the scanners. I had taken everything out of the bike box except for my bike because I was worried that if the box fell apart, I would lose stuff. One of my bike bags has all of my winter gear. I haven’t opened the bag since Montana, but there are holes in it so every time it rains everything in the bag gets wet. When the security agent opened up this bag, she literally took a step back from the smell. I don’t really blame her. I’d gotten a whiff of the mold and body odor smell. I know that I smell awful as well. She didn’t even bother going through the two other bike bags flagged by the machine. She was so shocked by the smell that I guess she would rather the plane go down and have to look through my bags. She pulled out a can of Febreze, and started spraying everything down. I was still trying to argue with her about my multi tools. I really need those tools to put my bike back together, and one of them has sentimental value for me since I’ve had it for years. Now she was starting to get angry. She started ignoring all of my arguments. What am I going to hurt with an Allen wrench? So I opened my bag back up like I was looking for something inside of them so the smell came wafting back out. She took notice really quickly. We argued For several minutes, but it was not a good situation. She had plenty of reason to be mad at me, since I smelled like a tramp, and I was trying to argue with her, and I had plenty of reason to be mad at her, because if she took my multi tool, it would cost me several hours in the morning waiting for a bike shop to open in Cartagena. Finally, she threatened to not let me through security, so I collected my things and moved on.

The flight itself was totally uneventful, and I got a nice nap in. When we landed, I made my way through customs and anxiously awaited the arrival of my bike bag. When I got it, it was in an absolute heap, but everything seemed intact. I walked to the nearest hotel and unpacked the box. Luckily, my bike survived, although I was unable to build it up without my tools. There is nothing for me to do about it, so I just went to bed.