The ride started out great - and then things got exciting.
The first flat tire was in the small town of Cayucos - mile 15
A great opportunity for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll
About three miles down the road - flat number two. And everyone lent a hand to help fix the flat.
But wait, yes, flat tire number three - right after a snack stop - just down the road. All before lunch
A great lunch stop at Pismo Beach
Posted by Patty with the car and the tire pump!
Jerry's notes:
About 15 miles out of Cambria I heard the infamous tick tick tick that means something is going wrong. Luckily we were cruising down the main street of Cayucos. I stopped and found the innertube was bulging out of the quarter inch gash in the tire sidewall that occurred yesterday that I didn't see. As the pictures above show I stopped in front of the towns coffee shop and got lots of help & put on the extra strength tire that I bought in Aberdeen, WA . One quarter mile out of town the tire goes flat. I guess the tube got pinched. After fixing this we progressed to lunch which was in a field on the grounds of Cuesta College. As we were eating one of Patty's famous cooler lunches, Tom notices that a "goat head burr" was stuck in the side of his SUV tire. We both said, "oh crap, let's check out the bikes, which we parked off the pavement. Tom had 3 burrs in his front tire and I had 7! I pulled mine out but was a little worried about how far they had gone in. We started off and made it from one entrance of the college to another before the tire was flat.again.. At this point we had traveled about 30 miles in 3 hours! What a day! After going 3600 miles across the country with
Tom & Patty previously with only two flats each, this was absolutely incredible! I blame it on Vining.
Notes from Tom:
One correction to Jerry's notes. It was 3-1/2 hours before we made 30 miles. I was wondering if we'd make our destination before dark. During the post-flat-tires riding, we encountered a "detour" on the Adventure Cycling map. What a disaster--way out of the way, poorly marked roads, and a TERRIBLE riding surface. After surviving that we encountered an extra nasty crosswind for about 6 miles. We leaned into the wind just to keep the bikes going in a straight line. Eventually that wind turned into a tailwind and we rode it all the way to Orcutt.
Stats weren't impressive--79 miles, 5 hours and 8 minutes, 2660 feet of climbing, and an average speed of 15.4. If you haven't been keeping track, we've pedaled a total of 1445 miles.
Sounds like you all need to swap out the ol' rubber tires and tubes for some jumbo size polyurethane skateboard wheels or something haha... What a mess! Glad you made to your destination eventually-!
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