The morning was georgous the clouds were low, keeping the sun off and temperatures cool. It would have been perfect riding weather if it hadn't been such perfect sleeping weather.
We stopped in Meeteetse, WY, made some lunch, had an ice cream cone, called home, and spent way too long examining the map in an attempt to avoid riding in the heat of the day. An hour outside of town the clouds moved in, cooling every thing down, and a tailwind came up.
Brad got out the head phones and started rocking out so I rode up ahead looking back occasionally to make sure he was still there. At the crest of a hill I looked back and saw him, then dropped down the other side a mile or so before I realized he hadn't crested it yet. I pulled over and sat a minute before a couple in a Volvo slowed down to tell me my "buddy's back there with a flat". I started pumping back up the 6% grade now going into a 10 mph headwind hoping he wasn't just changing CDs.
Brad most definitely had a flat, he'd pulled off the tire and had determined that the tube was shot. The side wall of the tire had started to come apart and put a half inch gash in the tube. We put the backup tire on with the "mystery tube" in it. It'd been in the parts bag for a while and we had no idea where it came from. We only by tubes with slime in them (Slime is a brand name of self-sealent) and this wasn't slimed but since we're good about patching holes as they happen it should have been fine.
25 ft later we realized that it wasn't fine and went through the whole procesess of takinq the wheel off and patching the mystery tube. "Where are those extra patches we got in Boise, I've only got one left?" Brad asked. After a few seconds I realized exactly where I'd left them, in Boise. "Don't worry about it I've got that other patch kit" I told him.
A few more miles down the road Brad picked up another flat. The backup tire had a bad looking spot on it that we were afraid would cause another flat so, when we swapped in the known good slimed tube, we put the first tire with the weak side wall back on. When I went to patch the mystery tube I found out that the extra patch kit only had one patch left in it. With only no patches left we started praying for a bike shop.
Entering Thermopolis we saw our 1st Wall Drug sign. If you've ever been near the state of South Dakota you've driven past a sign for Wall Drug. I'm sure that back forty or fifty years ago the drug store in Wall, SD was a standard small town shop but some time between now and then it turned into a self promoting tourist-trap. When I stopped in on a family road trip a few years back it was the size of a small mall. My brother and I'd been seeing the signs for a couple of hours and demand that my dad stop in Wall, SD so we could see this exciting place the signs kept talking about. We were very disapointed with what we found, they had every imagineable Wall Drug branded souvenir but every attraction was just a shadow of what the signs had promised. None the less the signs are such a part of the mid-west experience that I made the number of Wall Drug signs a new statistic.
We had dinner at Pizza Hut in Thermopolis, WY. The bro biker we met back in Bend, OR was halfway right, it'e all about salad bars but not at Wendy's go to Pizza Hut. Only the newer Wendy's have salad bars, all the Pizza Huts do and they're every where.
One thing that hit me while we were there eating was the thought "this place is run by kids". I guess that's when you can start to consider yourself old.
andrew
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