Bike killers

About fifteen miles into the trail this morning, we ran into six cyclists from England. Apparently, they were biking from San Francisco to New York to raise awareness for HIV prevention (the website is www.universitychallenge.org.uk). They carried their own gear, had camped a few times, and had been traveling the past five weeks. Apparently, they hadn't really been bikers before this either, and they had one cool story about "killing" a bike by running it into a car. After trading a few stories, we rode on to Sadalia. It was a good start to the day.

Unfortunately, the trail slowed us down a little bit. Austin got a flat tire a few miles after meeting the other cyclists, and it was a lot harder to fix that with the little pumps we carry around on our bikes. And the sand kept our pace down to about 12 mph. Still, we managed to get to Sadalia about 5:30.

There, Austin got two more flat tires. We were only carrying two spare tubes, and Austin said he hadn't grabbed the rubber cement for the patch kit. I called the closest bike shop, and they told me they were closed for a race. When I explained what we were doing, though, the owner said he would hang around for the next 20 minutes if I thought I could get there. The bike shop was actually on the same road as the race, so I ended up going the wrong way against a bunch of bikers riding their practice lap. But I made it to the bike shop, got a new tube, and headed back to find Austin pumping up the tire. Apparently he had rubber cement and was able to patch the tire.

And he had some helpers. Two kids were asking him if we were in the race today, and then offered to take us over to race. So we followed the kids to the bike race and decided to try to enter. Unfortunately, they weren't taking "beginning" racers when we arrived. But we got some info from one of the teams there about a race in St. Louis on Tuesday, so we may get another chance.

At this point, it was almost 7:00, and night was falling. So Austin and I, inspired by the races, sprinted off to try to beat the setting sun. Unfortunately, we weren't that fast. So we turned on our lights and headed on. Eventually, it got too dark for cars to see us, so we had to call Nick to get him to follow us into Warrensburg (the hometown of my hero, James McAdams). A short time later, we made it to our hosts for tonight. We got to do a little catching up with Chelsea, who has rejoined us for the tour.

~ Tom