Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Morning Report

8/12 Day 32 - Despite the blinding light from the bathroom and the moonlight last night I slept pretty well. Ethan woke up at some point for a while and saw a shooting star. Maybe he should have made a wish for a stress free day because we could have used one this morning.

We woke up super early hoping to leave early. We got all our stuff packed pretty quickly, but when I went to move my bike closer to camp I noticed my front tire was flat. Ethan got to work on it as fast as he could. He found a tiny wire stuck in the tire that had poked through the tube (probably from a shredded truck tire on the highway... Sound familiar Shawn?). He replaced the tube with the last good one we had. We prayed that we wouldn't need another one. We left camp at 7:45, plenty of time to get to McDonalds 22 miles away.

On the way out I noticed my Camelbak (a little backpack that holds a water bladder with a tube so I can drink and ride) was leaking down my back. I took it apart and didn't see any leaks in the actual bladder so I strapped it to my bag on the back and we continued. We got about 12 miles when I looked at Ethan's back tire and noticed it was almost flat. Crap! We stopped and put air in it hoping it was a slow leak. We didn't make it very far. We only had one tube that we thought might make it to the next town so we stopped and Ethan changed his tube for the other one. He found a wire in his tire too. We knew it was a slow leak in the old tube, but weren't sure how slow it would be with all the weight on Ethan's bike. We crossed our fingers.

We rode about 2 miles before it went almost completely flat again. Ethan decided that he would keep riding and put air in it every 2-3 miles until we got to Goleta. There were 4 bike shops in the same plaza as McDonalds so we knew we'd be ok once we made it there. At first Ethan thought I could ride ahead of him to try and get there faster, but he's must faster than me even with a flat tire so that didn't quite work out. I would get ahead of him while he stopped for air and then he would catch me. So with about 3 miles left we ditched that plan and decided we could still make it to McDonalds for breakfast.

We made it there with plenty of time. And the tire held up the whole way. We got some sausage McMuffins and hung out for a while. Ethan went over to the bike shop across the street and found a tube that was a little small, but the guy said it would work.

Currently we are sitting outside McDonalds. Ethan is fixing his tire and I'm blogging. Our next stop is Santa Barbara. There are a couple things we want to check out and an REI that we might go to for more tubes ... We're not taking any chances. :]

2 comments:

  1. Hope that solves it! Very annoying. Look up again tonight...Perseid Meteor showers peaking, up to 60 shooting stars per minute! Good night to leave the fly off! Too bad you're so close to the light pollution. Shawn

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