Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Disaster strikes v 3.0

Whew! What an unfortunate day. But first I will mention some things from yesterday. I believe Lenora may have mentioned that we got a hotel in van horn last night for lost night. We only road like 32 mile yesterday and basically had to eat an emergency day due to a miscalculation on miles. We couldn't really push past van horn without going 120 miles through the mountains, so our most logical plan was to just take a light day and chill in van horn.

After we checked in to our hotel I popped out to walk to the grocery to get some snacks when I saw a punkish looking girl walking across the street who totally looked out of place. We both sort of eye balled eachother until she crossed over and guessed that I was biking cross country as I didn't look like I should be in that town. Her name was Shay and she was walking cross country from Santa monica or something. Anyway, we chatted a bit and she seemed stoked to meet a like minded individual as she has been travelling on her own. I invited her to come hang at our hotel room if she got bored later (however, I informed her we were only in the hotel to watch lost that evening. Luckily she showed up before it came on). Anyway, she came over and we shot the shit and it was cool to meet her. She also has a blog if you readers want to check it out. Www.Fakeplasticshay.blogspot.com

Now, back to today. We got out the door for the most part on time and problem number one struck early. Zach had a flat. We fixed that shit then raged out of van horn on some frontage road and were in Kent tx in no time. So a few days ago we ran in to some bikers going the opposite way than us and they warned us about how Kent had Jack shit other than alcohol and beef jerky. They were liars. It was like a Gatorade utopia in there. We were all stocked out of our minds thinking we wouldn't see shit all day. Well Kent was a fine stop. So all you hatred can step off.

We perched up in an abandoned school house right off the Kent exit for lunch and I had noticed my deraellier was acting funny again. I wheeled my bike up in the dirt to adjust only to blow out my tire on a broke bottle. Sweet! After I changed my tube it turned out my skewer was also wonky and it was hard as shit to put my wheel back on. The icing on the cake was that when I went to adjust my deraillieur I found out it was truly broken this time. The arm snapped in half. I furiously decided to just take the damn thing off and ride without it. Just so happens it was the least awesome day to not have a front deraillieur as we were biking through the mountains. Luckily, I experimented a bit and figured out that I could easily shift down with my foot and up by bending down and popping the chain over with my finger. Not really a perfect process, but it works for now until I find a new deraillieur. I rode 50 mile theough the mountains like that and honeslty it
wasn't too bad. Who needs a front dérailleur anyway?!

That aside the ride was exhausting. We had brutal head winds while climbing all day. Once the head winds let up we had to climb super steep shit. I also was periodically getting mystery flats which I believe are from clbimg in the extreme heat with too much weight. I had to stop and pump up 3 times.

After, we finally got out of the mountains we were about 9 miles to the end of our 94 mile day when lenoras tire goes flat too. All three of us got flats today! I had multiple! So shitty. So we changed her shit and started riding again and I noticed my skit was flat yet again. At this point I justnpumped it up and rode off furiously for the last few miles to the town.

Fortunately the day ended wonderfully. We made our first successful use of warmshowers.com and are staying with a great couple here in fort Davis. Susan and matt welcomed us in to their home with dinner ready and towels for showers. They even read in our blog that we were vegan so they accomodated by buying us daiya cheese to put on the delicious vegan food they made us. They offered to loan me a dérailleur or drive me to the bike shop in the morning in the next town over. They even recorded lost for us as we were originally supposed to watch it last night. We couldn't ask for better hosts. Thanks so much if you are reading this. Oh yeah, and they just so happened to have 2 spare queen size beds. Get out of town! We will have to try warm showers more often!

Anyway, I gotta sleep. Supposed to break our mileage record tomorrow. Hope I don't tear off my finger in my chain ring haha.

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