I need to pick better days to have flats

FRI 7/16 -- Lander to Dubois ("dew-BOYS") WY (76) [WARNING: This one's long]

The ride was long (76 miles), the direction was mainly up (2,000 ft elevation gain), the weather forecast was hot (mid 90's), and we knew that strong west winds (10-20 mph, with gusts up to 40) were gonna arrive in the afternoon -- so all signs indicated that the prudent rider should get an early start and not dawdle. And start early I did -- I was on the road at 7:00.

All went well for an hour or so until I had a flat(*). On the back wheel, of course, since they're a little more difficult to fix. Oh well -- flats happen. But when I took the wheel off I noticed that the tire was pretty ragged, with lots of cuts and scrapes, and paper-thin where the tread was worn away -- not worth putting back on, in other words. I waited for Michael (the van driver for the day) to come by so I could grab the new spare tire I'd stored in the van since the beginning of the trip. Good planning, but I should have noticed the problems and changed the tire days before. The wait and the repair took an hour and a half -- so much for my early start. I took off again. It's getting warm already.

But wait, there's more! Tell us, Don Pardo. About 5 miles down the road I noticed that I was feeling all the road's bumps in my hands and arms via my front tire, but almost nothing in the saddle via the back tire -- more comfortable for my backside, but not a sign of bike health. Sure enough, the supposedly fixed back tire was soft, meaning I had a slow leak of some kind. I pumped it up -- maybe the valve just wasn't tight?-- and set off again. Well, about 3 iterations of ride/stop/re-inflate/ride convinced me that that strategy wasn't going to cut it, and that I needed to bite the bullet and replace the tube again. More delay, more heat, and now my good friend, Mr. Wind-in-the-face, showed up as promsed to join the fun. And I'm still 50 miles from the end of the ride. Michael arrived to assist (he'd stopped to take care of some errand) and get me back in the saddle, battling the wind even on the downhills.

Insult to injury: A few miles after the second tube replacement I caught a very large bug in my mouth -- or possibly a small to medium-sized bird. ("I caught" is probably the wrong way to phrase it; I wasn't moving fast enough to play an active role in the bug/bird capture event. "The wind blew" would be more accurate.) Gag, choke, gag some more, chug on water bottle, spit, repeat a few times -- problem solved! And the emotional scars fade with each passing day.

Blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine -- the day was very long, and very hot, and very dry, and very windy, and I was generally unhappy to be where I was. (Some of the riders who beat the worst of the wind, and could ride without the top of their head facing forward, talked about the pretty scenery. Personally, as a head-downer, I didn't see much of it, but I must have looked around at one point and agreed, because I did take the one photo shown here.) It was so unpleasant that when I hit 60 miles I started shouting out the remaining miles as they crawled by -- "15!" Then, I don't know, 6 or 7 minutes later, "14!" ... If I'd been offered a chance to quit I might have accepted it. But I wasn't, so the only thing to do was slog on. 

I stopped at one point to scramble down the bank to the aptly-named (and beautiful) Wind River to soak my shirt in order to try to stay cool, which helped for a while. Still I was at risk of running out of water during the long, hot afternoon -- many of the group had the same problem. I refilled once at an out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere artist/artisan's workshop -- the guy made incredible stuff (wine racks, floor lamps, chandeliers, jewelry, etc etc etc) out of antlers, wood, stone, and other found materials. Later, a few miles from the end, and running dry again, I caught up with Robin and Lucille; Lucille was nearly out, so I shared half of my remaining half bottle of water with her. Before accepting my relatively-fresher water, Lucille, not thinking clearly, I suspect, dumped out her few hot but precious tablespoons on the road. Gaack! I almost jumped off the bike to lap up the tiny puddle! Fortunately, although we didn't know it at the time, we were just a couple miles from a motel/RV park where we found enough water to get us into camp. (And where we also ran into Michael, who had brought the van out with water for those of us still on the road.)

I was pretty much spent by about 4:00 when I limped into the KOA campground -- the pretty nice KOA campground, to be fair, with good showers, a laundry, and even a pool. I tossed in a load of laundry, took a shower, then went back to the laundry room and hung out there due to the presence of an electrical outlet, so as to charge up this bad boy I'm holding in my hand right now. As a result of my laundry sojourn I missed some major interactional fireworks back in camp, having to do, I heard later, with food storage details and the lateness of dinner. Long, hard, hot rides are tough on everyone.

A positive note for the end of the day: it was rodeo night in Dubois, and Steve, Kath, Robin, and Lucille were pumped up to go and have a look. Lucille urged me to join them, which I declined initially on grounds of exhaustion. But she persisted, so I hopped in the van with them. It was great -- possibly the whitest and most cowboy-boot-intensive event I've ever been part of, but just a wonderful small town scene. There was bull ridin' (or attempts thereof; each instance was very very brief) and calf ropin' and bronco ridin' and lassoin' and horses doin' stuff and little kids trying to ride a sheep and teams of people trying to catch a rampaging cow and remove the rope around its neck and all manner of points awarded and penalty points assessed -- all accompanied by the cheers of the crowd (500 people, maybe?), who seemed to know most of the participants personally. We were back in camp a little after 10 -- very late, in other words -- but it was worth it, a great experience, and a great way to end the day. 

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(*) In the interest of an accurate and complete depiction of trouble on the road, and its reverberations, I'm going to risk providing more detail here than anyone could possibly care to know. You can skip to the end and not miss anything important.

(Sent from my iPhone)

(Sent from my iPhone)