Off for some rest days

This morning should have been a relaxing, easy morning. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda! We had no pressure to make our miles because Brooke’s dad and mom were scheduled to pick us up somewhere along the route and take us to her sister’s for a few rest days from all of the bike tour hoopla.

Brooke’s sister lives about one hour off the trail, and we figured, why not take a little break from all of this FUN. But, because Brooke secretly enjoys the headaches, she decided spur of the moment to use the mini hand pump to fill up our tires just as we were getting ready to roll out of camp. Genius!

The hand pump did nothing more than let most of the air out of her back tire as Brooke frantically tried to hold it onto the valve while I futilely pumped air outside of the valve with the miniature F-ING pump. It all happened so fast, and before we knew it, there was very little air in the tire. Ugh. Just because Brooke and I are on a bike tour, it doesn’t mean that we are good with using all the necessary bike accessories accompanying us.

So, as the story goes, Brooke cussed and cursed, and I ever so unhelpfully made comments like “why did you just do that?” and “shouldn’t you have just waited until we had a full sized floor pump around to do this?" and I repeated this doozie a few times “ooooh, that’s really bad, Brooke!”

Thankfully, Brooke is a better person than I am, and didn’t suggest that I use my own hot air to blow up her back tire! Then, Brooke remembered all the barefoot children riding bikes around the campground last night, so she took off to find a pump. Predictably, the only pump in the entire campground was broken, so we had no choice but to ride out with Brooke’s mostly flat tire.

Three miles down the road we saw an athletic looking guy packing a car with sports equipment and Voila! They let us borrow a bike pump and invited us to stay the night. Oh, how I wish we would have had that offer last night, and we could have skipped the dealings with the mucky campground filled with unsavory characters. With all four tires filled to the brim with air, we headed off for Chester, Illinois.

We were really excited about the levy section of the trail today because it is flat and goes along the river. We arrived, and it was indeed flat, but with a headwind that felt like a jet engine before take-off. What’s kind of sad is that despite the headwind, I was still elated to be on a flat surface, even if the pesky headwind made me want to die a little.

We pedaled along at 8mph, and eventually arrived at a little place called Gorham. Gorham. There are no words for the nothingness that is Gorham. It’s hard sometimes, because when you are pedaling to whatever next little town is on the map, you envision-- almost in the way a person lost wandering the Sahara likely envisions-- air conditioning, or friendly helpful people, or god forbid, a convenience store. But, so often it is not the case that you find cool air, ice water, and friendly people. Rather, you find only a closed post office, or a stretch of abandoned railroad tracks, and nobody around at all.

So, today Brooke and I sat crouched in the sliver of shade outside the closed post office and made our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we peed behind the post office, and actually everything was perfect. You learn that you don’t need much to make you happy when you are doing something like this. PB&J still tastes great sitting on the sidewalk in the heat with nobody around for miles. The bike tour allows you to be happy about the little things, like making it to the next place, or finding that the ice in your pricey thermos hasn’t melted yet.

Brooke’s parents found us out in the middle of nowhere, and it was great to see them. We loaded up the truck, stopped for large milkshakes at McDonald’s, and headed to a hotel with a real bed, and air conditioning for the night and it was wonderful!

Melissa