Monday, August 10, 2009

Day 56: Bliss, ID to Hammett, ID

Today's plan was to ride to Mountain Home, which would put us in a great position to get to Boise tomorrow with enough time to find a bike shop and maybe even explore a little bit. It wasn't to be.

We started with a stop at Ziggy's, where we'd found dinner the night before.

Then it was back on the road, following the old US-30 route. But we didn't travel far. Not even half a mile down the road we found a Post Office and stopped to mail some things back. Little did we know that the Post Office had an amazing view of the Snake River Canyon. Jillian went to shoot photos while I took care of the Post Office.

I managed to scrape together just over four pounds of stuff to mail, including receipts, our gloves, some chain lube, and the headset wrench.

Then we were back to riding through nothing at all.

This open road wasn't quite as bad as the previous one. We were going downhill.

We were riding down into the valley, where we'd be able to directly follow along the shores of the river. We love riding downstream along a river.

Of course, we were hardly at the bottom of the hill before we flatted, on the front tire.

We passed through the very little town of King Hill, which has a pretty awesome location on the Snake. Then we flatted again, this time on the trailer. At least there were nice things to look at.

Not long after we came into the town of Glenns Ferry. We stopped a little grocery store to buy some brunch. We also got Marzipan, which wound up being the most disgusting thing either of us had ever tried eating.

Back on the road, we stayed on old US-30, following the highway fairly closely. Then the front flatted, again. Every time we were getting hit by goatheads, which seemed to be all over.

Not long after, we flatted again. This time outside of an RV Park.

But this time the patch wouldn't hold. We flatted as soon as we tried to put the tire back on the bike. We walked it, flat tire and all, about a quarter mile back so that we could hide in the shade in an underpass below the interstate.

By now we were completely out of spare tubes for the front - and we'd started with three. One had a bad valve. The other two looked like this:

The red patches came from our original patch kit. The green ones are from the Walmart patch kit. They simply wouldn't hold, no matter how long we held them in place, or how well we cleaned and scratched the hole. We were stuck.

By now it was about one in the afternoon, and hot. I was, once again, so frustrated with our equipment. I decided to walk down the road to the bridge over the train tracks to see if I saw anything that resembled a town. Jillian would stay in the shade and start calling everyone under the sun to see if she could procure us a way to a bike shop.

It couldn't have been more than a half mile to the bridge, but the heat was killer. My sandals were getting stuck in sticky road tar, melting under the heat. I didn't see anything, but the walk helped to calm me down.

Jillian hadn't had any luck. No matter how much money we promised no one seemed to have a vehicle that could pick us up. We had two plans. At 6:30 the owner of a bike shop in Mountain Home could drive down and bring us parts, or we could call my friend Kate's friend Jeremy - but he lived way back in Pocatello, and it would take him a long time to travel way out here to help us. We decided to wait it out until 6:30 - over three hours away.

If there was ever a time that I wanted to be done touring, it was today. I hate equipment problems, especially when I've done everything I can to be ready for them and things still go wrong. We hadn't seen a proper bike shop since Laramie - the ones in Lander and Pocatello had been closed, and we hadn't seen them anywhere else. We probably should have taken a really short day to get things squared away, but we were simply out of time. We had to get to the coast in order to meet Jillian's parents, who had already bought their tickets.

Maybe a half hour later a little, a late 80s black BMW pulled up (cars only passed maybe once every thirty or forty minutes), rolled down their window, and said to us, "You're sitting in shit." Joann offered to let us wait under a tree in her backyard, just down the road. We thought that'd be great, so we explained our predicament. Joann said that she was headed in to Mountain Home anyway to pick some things up for her mother - so she'd gladly take us in to town to pick up the parts. Perfect! Maybe we could be back under way without having to do any makeup miles.

We stowed our bike at her place and she drove us to town, dropping us off at Tony's Bike shop.

Tony's didn't have a 20 inch presta valve tube, which isn't terribly surprising. It isn't the world's most common tube. They could drill the rim, so we could fit a schrader in there, but I wasn't enamored with that idea. I saw a slight chance of cracking the rim and grounding us for a few more days. Jillian spotted something amazing - a no flat inner tube. It was simply a solid piece of rubber that you'd use instead of the tube. It wasn't a perfect solution though - this flatless tube simulated about 45psi - we were used to riding close to 100. They were also almost impossible to get off - we'd have to cut the tire off with a knife. But no flats. Ever. We bought it.

We met Joann back at the Albertsons, and she offered to make us dinner and give us a place to spend the night. How could we say no? Then when she offered to let us play tourist for the rest of the day, we were simply in heaven.

She took us to see the Idaho Sand Dunes, which are pretty awesome. There's a valley with high walls on both sides, causing passing air to carry dust and clay right over the valley, but to drop the heavier sand. These sand dunes were several hundred feet high, and still active - they moved around over the course of the year. Joann made sure that, just like all tourists, we pranced up them.

Next stop was one of Joann's friend's farms, where fresh cantaloupe could be found.

Sadly, her friend wasn't home. But that didn't stop us from raiding the outside fridge and taking a couple.

Back at Joann's, we called home, had showers, and fixed the bike up in the comfort of a shaded patio. Joann also picked up her mother and brought her back. Her mother had survived the Dresden firebombings, walking out of the city afterward as a young teenager. She had a lot of interesting stories. We also put her up on our bicycle for pictures.

Joann made us a wonderful dinner and filled us full of alcohol for the ride the next day. We even got to sleep in a real, comfortable bed.

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