We both got a good nights sleep last night. I was glad to wake up and find that my chest pain had dissipated quite a bit since yesterday. As if it isn't a pain to pack everything up every day, the bugs just make it so much worse. Once we were ready to go, we headed over to the grocery store again to get some milk to use the rest of our cereal. We love that they have huge 1K bags of cereal because it provides us with two full meals of cereal (since we both have 3 or 4 big bowls full each time). Cereal had been the one thing that has held us through since we have to eat so much all the time. We did a little grocery shopping to re stock on rice, oatmeal and cookies so we would be set for a while. Afterwards, we headed to the rec center. On the way there, we made a detour because we saw two touring cyclists down the road at an RV campground. It was two girls, Danica and Yvonne, from Germany and they were riding from Whitehorse to Calgary and then down towards South America. They too are going to be in Vancouver sometime in September, so you never know, maybe we will see them again. (I forgot to mention that yesterday we saw a couple other cyclists. While I was at the rec center, Joe had a chance to talk to them. They are a grandfather and grandson team on recumbants. They were riding from Seattle to Fairbanks and were taking their time going about 35 miles a day.) Once we got the rec center, we packed away all of our food and then did some computer stuff. I got to talk to Grammy and Mom on Oovoo for a while and got some more "business cards" written out while Joey used the computer. It was so relaxing to just sit there on their big comfy leather couches! I didn't want to leave and go back out in the middle of no where with the bugs. Eventually, we decided we had to leave so we could get some miles in. It was a bright and sunny day today (not like the chilly/cloudy 54 degree weather we had yesterday), but that made it feel really warm when we were climbing hills. After we had re-ridden the 14 miles to the junction of the Alcan and 37 we stopped for lunch since it was already after 2. We had noodles again since we had a half a bag left and snacked on some cookies. It was nice because they had a water spicket right there. As we were getting ready to leave, Joey noticed that his back tire was flat again (he still doesn't know how his tire went flat a couple days ago). He put some air in it in hopes that it would last for a while before we hit the road. Since we have made it an official plan to only do about 40 miles a day so that we can try to shrink our time of being ahead of schedule we only planned to ride another 20-25 more miles today. Just down the road from where we were was a place called Nugget City. They had a nice little store that had a lot of cute souvenirs. After our stop there, we only made it about 2 miles down the road before Joe's tire was already going flat again. Since we had just passed a rest area about a half a mile back, we turned around so we could get off the road to fix the tire. Again, there was nothing in the tire or on the rim that appeared to make it go flat. Maybe it was just a bad tube. Whatever the case, once he got it fixed we got back on the road and didn't have any more issues with it the rest of the day. Joe is feeling really defeated by the trip lately because of all the mechanical issues that have been happening. It seems like every 50 miles something is going wrong. I can imagine it has to be so incredibly frustrating constantly working on the bikes (he's my bicycle mechanic, so I am usually just there for moral support and to find/hand him any tools he needs). The remaining miles went by pretty fast. We had a couple long hills to climb, but the wind was helping us today so we flew downhill and on any flatter ground. It was so wonderful. The only bad part of riding has been the black flies lately. They love to just fly around you as you are riding, especially uphill. We are constantly swatting at them because we are scared to get bit because those bites hurt so much. At one point Joe had a magazine rolled up stuck in his handlebar bag so he could swat them when they landed. They were really hounding him, so much so that I purposely wanted to ride farther away from him. At one point he said that the bugs are "driving me completely crazy." The "wilderness" as everyone calls it (and keep saying how great it is) really stinks because there is almost no way to just enjoy it because there are just an insane amount of bugs. Its funny to hear people who have been just driving in their cars talk about how bad the bugs are, "especially at rest areas," and how they "can't leave their windows down when they stop." It almost makes me laugh because 90% of the time they are sitting in their cars or RVs out of the bugs, for us its just the opposite, I feel like they just don't understand fully how bad the bugs really are. Our hope for a camp spot was next to a river. Just as we were getting to the number of miles that we planned to do today, there it was, the bridge and a little pull off right next to the river. There was a nice little sandy beach and firewood all ready to go, it was almost perfect, again, except for the bugs. All we wanted to do was sit by the water and enjoy the scenery, but that is almost impossible. Even though we have our bug nets on, if we sit down in one spot for more than a couple minutes you will be covered in at least 50 mosquitoes. It is almost disgusting. Once we got the tent set up, it started to rain, so we hopped in our tent for a while to relax and stay dry. Luckily the rain didn't last too long and the sun came back out. We ventured outside again to make some rice for dinner. Joe made a fire with the wood that was there in hopes that the smoke would keep some of the mosquitoes away. After I was about 2/3 of the way through my dinner, I just didn't want to eat anymore (which NEVER happens!). I wasn't super full, but I was just tired of trying to eat in the bugs, it wasn't worth it; Joey finished my rice fore me. We had a couple cookies each, brushed our teeth and got the dishes all washed in the river. Joey worked on getting the food hung and then we got back into our tent as quickly as we could. It is so sickening to just lay in our tent and watch all the mosquitoes through the vents in our tent and all over the tent walls. We are both officially tired of the bugs. It's not the remoteness, the terrain, the weather or any other conditions that make this the hardest touring we have ever done, its once again, the bugs. Neither of us have ever seen this many mosquitos in our entire lives. The black flies by day, the mosquitos by night, there is almost no part of the days up here that we can look forward to. Getting through the bugs will make accomplishing our goal of riding to Alaska all the more meaningful. We rode 38.12 miles today and camped next to the Little Rancheria River.
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