What a cold night it was last night! I slept with my turtle neck, sweatshirt, 2 cycling coats, and the REI jacket Robert gave me so that I wouldn't freeze. While we were making breakfast, it started to snow a little bit. We had a little extra oatmeal for breakfast because we knew the wind would probably slow us down quite a bit and that we had another pass to go over today, so we might not get to eat lunch until later. Once we were all packed up, we hit the road. Although we knew we were within a half a mile from a ghost town, we decided not to go because we knew we had a long day ahead of us. Sure enough, once we got out of the park, it was a repeat of yesterday afternoon. The wind was unbelievable. We were averaging 4-5mph. It was torture again. As we kept riding we were worried that we may not even make it to the next town, which was around 28 miles away. After about 9 miles, we stopped for a brownie break. Not too long after that, I noticed that Joe's back wheel was really out of true. Upon further inspection we found that a spoke had broken. If he continued to ride on it, it would only make it worse and more spokes would begin to break. So, we started walking, trying to figure out what to do. We finally decided that maybe we should just flag down a truck to get to the next town and then go from there. So that's what we did. We waved at the next truck that went by and to our surprise, they stopped. God had sent us angels because the people in the truck happened to be doing a supported tour across the US. They had a very full truck bed and had their bikes on the rack. They had just ridden over the pass we went over last night and at the entrance to the state park decided it was too cold and windy to ride today, so they were riding in the truck. None the less, they managed to squeeze us, our bikes and all of our gear in the truck. We were saved! It turns out that they were going the exact same route as us until Hamilton, MT. Although we planned to only get to the next town and then try to figure out what to do, these guys were great and said that they would get us to a bike shop. So, we ended up riding for about 100 miles in a truck. It was like going through a time warp! Along the way, we stopped at a convenience store and one of the guys bought Joe and I each a hot chocolate! When we were about 20 miles from Hamilton, where we knew there was a bike shop, we passed another place that looked like a bike shop. When we went in, we found out they make custom built recumbent bikes. It was a pretty neat shop! They even had a cute little puppy named Annabel. Since they didn't have anything that would help us, we jumped back in the truck and headed for Hamilton. Once we got to the bike shop there, Joe took his bike in to have them look at it. Turns out his back wheel is pretty much on the verge of falling apart. The spokes are poking through the nipples so the wheel isn't going to last much longer. It is kind of sad because the wheel only has about 8,000 miles on it, so it should have lasted longer than that. The spacers in Joe's crank have also broken, which was causing the crank to move back and forth. Apparently when we got the ball bearings replaced back in CO, it was over-tightened causing the spacers to be pushed out. While the bike shop was working on Joe's bike, we said our goodbyes to Alex, Dan, and Ron. While we were waiting, we went to the library for a little while. Somehow, Grammy accidentally deleted the website's main picture and it reverted back to the default picture; which was a cross on a hill at sunset. Joey said with that picture up there it looked like we died or something which was kinda funny. So I spent some time fixing up the website while we waited. Since his back wheel is in such bad shape we are going to have to buy a new one in Missoula, and may buy a Bob trailer too, but we haven't quite decided yet. Once we got everything fixed enough so that we would make it to Missoula tomorrow, we called up our Warm Shower's host, Tim, to get more specific directions to their house. We got to take nice hot showers and there was even a really pretty kitty named McLovin' to play with! She was so cuddly! When Tim's wife Cassie got home, we had some amazing chicken stir fry for dinner and got to meet their adorable chocolate lab, Sophie. We had fun chit-chatting and hearing about other people that have stayed with them. One guy that stayed with them last week has been touring for 15 years! He lives on 10 bucks a day, I don't know how he does it. By the time we were finished with dinner it was pretty late, so we all went to bed (yes, we got to sleep in a bed!!). Today was a very interesting day in the least bit and pretty frustrating since there have been so many problems with the bikes, but we were blessed that the truck that happened to be going by had cyclists in it and that we had a nice warm house to stay in tonight. We only rode 13.14 miles today (but it took us 2hrs and 12 minutes because of the wind), but traveled about 110 in the truck. Now that we had a ride for so long, we are a couple days further ahead of schedule.
|
|