Mañana

Jon Scott
Aug 18, 2022
4 min read

Updated: Dec 11, 2022

“Tried and I tried but I don’t understand

Never seemed to work out the way I had it planned”

- Jimmy Buffett

I posted early yesterday so missed out on a lot of the action. Turns out, it just all spilled over into today. When last I checked in, I was killing time in a hotel room in Silverton, dodging raindrops and wondering if I actually had a flat tire. The answer to the last question was yes. The leak was very slow so it was difficult to tell. I inflated the tire before heading off in search of dinner and when I got back to the room, the mystery was clearly solved. That’s when the fun began. I dutifully removed the wheel, removed the tube, discovering it was definitely pinched, and installed a spare. When I went to inflate it, the tube didn’t even pretend to hold air. The valve stem was broken. I removed that tube and tossed it out. I put a second tube in. In the process of wrestling the tire back on to the rim, the tire iron flew up and took a significant chunk of skin off my nose, which then proceeded to bleed profusely. I eventually got the tire back on, but the second tube also did not hold air. As it was close to midnight, I gave up and decided I’d try again in the morning. If that didn’t work, the one and only bike shop in town opened at 1:00 on Thursdays. I’d just hang out.

This morning, I decided to patch the original tube that had lasted the first 4500 miles. I installed the patch and inflated the tube, waiting for the inevitable failure. I decided to have breakfast, pack everything up, and clean up the hotel room a bit, just to give the tube time to fail before I went through the hassle of reinstalling the tire. Much to my surprise, the patch worked. I put everything back together and then checked the tire again. Still good. This would be a theme I repeated throughout the day. Finally, after packing everything up, the tire still holding, I decided to make a break for it. The problem I had was that in order to stay on my schedule, I had 100 miles to ride today, and it was after 9:30am already. To further complicate things, the two passes I didn’t ride yesterday, were right out of the chute this morning. In fact, the first one started about 1/4 mile up the road from the motel. 7 miles up. The ride was not nearly as harrowing as yesterday’s climb and I was feeling invigorated.

I got to the top, 10,910’, and had a sweet 4-mile downhill which led directly to the last climb. 3 miles up to just under 10,700’. Again, it wasn’t scary which made the riding more comfortable and I got up it with no issues. From there, I literally had about 85 miles of downhill to go. It wasn’t quite that simple, but it felt great. I even managed to accomplish a something that I’d long thought about on my rides. On the first big downhill today, I got to one of the electronic speed signs that tell you how fast you’re going and start flashing if you’re going to fast. It started flashing “SLOW DOWN”! I made good time all the way down to Durango. It was about 2:00 and I still had 50 miles to go, but It seemed like a solid idea to stop at a bike shop and pick up a couple of spare tubes. No reason to push my luck. I stopped at a store which actually carried the right sized tube - but with the wrong valve. I found another store that was much larger and appeared to have everything. They didn’t. Specifically, they didn’t have any tubes my size. They had them too big and with the wrong valves.

At that point, I had no choice but to keep going. I’d check bike shops in Farmington, NM tomorrow. The ride from Durango to Farmington was pretty good, except that I never made it to Farmington. As soon as I crossed into New Mexico, the wide shoulder became covered with loose gravel and the occasional broken glass. I made it 13 miles to the town of Aztec, before the inevitable happened. Of course by then, it was almost 6 and the one bike shop in town was closed. I sat at the McDonalds, drinking my $1 any-size drink, and tried to call an Uber to take me the last 15 miles to Farmington, where I had made my non-refundable hotel reservation. I got a ride, but when I put the note that I had a bike with a flat and my packs, the driver said that he wasn’t willing to take the bike because he had a brand new car. He said that there was no problem taking me and the saddlebags and did I still want the ride. Moron!! I canceled the ride and got nicked with a $5 cancellation fee because the driver was already on his way. I tried to get another ride, but apparently, that guy was the only active Uber driver in Farmington. Every time I refreshed the app, he would pick up the ride and then I’d have to cancel - with no further fees, thankfully. I tried the cab company in Farmington, but they don’t answer there phone. Pretty much out of options, I found a hotel in Aztec, and did the walk of shame the mile and a half down the highway to get there.

Tomorrow promises to be another fun-filled day, but one good thing did happen this evening that will get the day off to a good start in the morning.