June 26, 2009, Friday, Riverside, WY to Walden, CO

We ate breakfast in Riverside at a nice Western restaurant bar, and after breakfast, I discovered another slow leak flat. I fixed one of the holes, but missed another!

After 12 ½ miles enroute to Walden, CO, the rear tire went flat again (flat number three). As I started to fix the tire, it started to rain again! I replaced the tube with my spare, but as I pumped it up, the tire started foaming at the rim. Apparently, I had failed to properly patch that tube from the first flat. It appears that the only way to properly patch a tire is to immerse it in water to look for bubbles! At this point, after working for an hour in the cold, and rain, with two damaged tubes, I decided I would need to just pedal along, adding air when necessary until we reached our final destination for the day, when along came another helping had.

Mr. Plaitt, the owner of a local 4,000 acre ranch picked me up in his pick-up truck and took me to his dry garage. We found the leaks in my tubes, using the water immersion method, and patched them. At this point, the tires, wheels and tubes were all wet, but I reassembled them again, and pumped them up to 100 pounds using Mr. Plaitt’s compressor. Things were perfect until POW, the tire bead pushed passed the rim, and blew a large hole in my tube! I dried the tube, tire, and rim, and re-installed the tire, this time inflating it to only 55 pounds. This time, it held air. I was back on the road after about 2 hours or so.

Tom, on the other had, was cold and wet. He had tried to stay warm, but the only way he could do so, was to lay down in a ditch on the side of the road. When I next heard form him, he was already in Walden. He bought a new tire and tube from a hardware store as a spare, just in case my tire blew again. While in the hardware store, he found a guy named Keith with a pickup truck who was willing to come and get me. I could have gone on by myself, but the ride seemed like a better idea at the time. I gave Keith some gas money.

We bicycled past the Welcome to Colorado sign, but it was raining too hard to stop for the picture, so we decided to take a photo of a Colorado sign as we left the state.

We stayed in the Walden City Park tonight, and had dinner at a local restaurant with Dave Shuey, and his wife. They were staying at a remote B and B some 12 or so miles outside of town.

Total miles for Paul 18, and for Tom about 48.