July 2, 2010
We woke up today and it was still raining. That plus the fact that we were pretty tired made us decide to take a rest day. In order to not mess up our route, we decided to bike 13.5 miles to an inn in Newport, OR. We hit the road at about 11am and climbed over Cape Foulweather and then to the steep rolling hills that came after them. Unfortunately I got a flat tube on my rear tire about 3 miles before we got to our destination. The rain had stopped when we started riding, but it started up again right when I started changing my tube. I couldn’t find my tire levers, so I had to use the ones that came with my multi-tool, which didn’t make the job easy. We started down the road again and I noticed that my bike was really unbalanced. Turns out that I must have pinched the tube while I was putting it in, so I had another hole in the new tube! I refilled it enough just to get me to the inn we were staying at and found a bike shop about 8 blocks away so that I could buy some new tire levers and another couple of spare tubes (since I was going to use my last spare to change out the tube again). I walked to the bike shop (after emptying out my trailer bag looking for my levers) and in proper fashion found my tire levers right when I got back to the room with the new ones.
I got the tire changed out again and this time it was a successful change. Taka had done some adjusting on his bike as well, so we test rode both of them to a laundromat about a mile away to wash our clothes. Interesting thing about our “rest” days is that they aren’t all that restful; it’s more like a “catch-up” day. Either way, I enjoy them very much and appreciate the time to get these things done. Above all else I’m happy to have everything dry again.
Tomorrow is back to riding. I’m happy because this should be the last of the rain we get in Oregon and we’ll be passing the halfway point of the state tomorrow.
-Chris