Broken shift cable

Well, my intention for today was to go 55-60 miles, but it was cut short after a little over an hour when I suddenly discovered my rear derailleur wasn't working quite right. It was on long downhill, so for a few minutes I though something had just jammed and given a little fiddling things would straighten out. But after discovering nothing was working, I finally elected to roll into a field and stop.

Once stopped, I looked and to my dismay saw that the rear derailleur cable had simply broken where it attaches to the derailleur. A non-shifting rear is a bit impossible to continue on, since what happens is that the shifter ends up on the smallest cog, and it's just impossible to ride up any inclines in that gear.

So I hope to be able to find a few hours now in the middle of the week to do a longer ride. It's now less than a month to the LIVESTRONG ride.