Flat Tires, Log Huts and Hippie Brethren

Today was, well, amalgamatious. Basically in that last night, as I was rolling in to my destination town (a good 1/2 again what I intended to ride) I saw a lovely pile of pointy rocks alongside the road as I was descending yet another golden afternoon hillside along beautiful ocean cliff terrain. In my mind, covorting with Modest Mouse in the earpiece and whatever wonderful imaginatory plights my own head found itself wandering from cortex to cortext over, I dashed threw said rocks – YAHOO! was not at all an internet portal but the sound of my happiness installed in the day’s ride.

But what’s this? Soon I discovered the worst…that I was 1 flat tire and 2.5 miles short of my destination. I thought, “No big deal, I’ve come prepared” but alas, I had not, and where I needed a patch kit or a new tube, all I had was the tire casing… A garden burger, a few pumping sessions and 7 miles later I came across a KOA (Kamp of America – how kitch!) I made camp there, surrounded by a flagrant fahr to outdue all previous ones I’d made, three road sodas and the promise of an evening outside of the worries of tomorrow’s flat tire fixing situations…

I made camp, fell asleep, and wonderful dreams pursued.

But upon my awakening the harsh reality set in – do I attempt to patch the tire using the American tradition of duct tape? Or perhaps I should just try and hitch a ride with some traveling trucker or pickup driving local? I attempted both, and both rebutted with the anti-success of my morning. It was now 1:00pm Pacific Time and I found myself, sunburnt nose now scabbing over, pushing my bike up and down the hills of coastal Southern Oregon.

I affixed a sign to my back which read:

Flat
Tire
Headed
South?

And of course, they all were, but no one stopped. Not even the first fellow bicyclist, who simply zipped by me with his super gay biking shorts and “I’m not getting laid” ram horned handle bars…

Another few miles…

And, just as despair and questioning and intrigue and the idea that perhaps a set of leaved greens would help to pass the time nearly set upon me a fellow traveling adventurer on bikeback rode up. He startled me…but his eyes, like a deer who feels sorry for the vegetarian driver about to kill it, poured over my situation and he was kind enough to not only donate a patch (which was shaped like a fire flower from Mario 1) but also to instruct me as to how I might best use it. He stayed with me until I had the situation under control and then rode off into the sunset. I passed him again where he was setting up his tent but he was too far off the beaten path for me to stop… “What a guy” I didn’t think, but you get the point…

In the end, I came out of the situation with about half a dozen funny short movies I’d made on my camera and double the distance I had hoped to travel that day. I’m now 1 day ahead of schedule and sitting at a coffee shop in Gold Beach, Oregon.

Tally hoe, Chris! And same to you, my dear readers…

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