Day Thirty Six

Even though today was a pretty short day it was eventful. We rode 58 miles from Lamar, CO to La Junta, CO (pronounced la-ha-na, apparently.)

I woke up before Jason again, and packed up all of my things. As I was about to wake Jason up, a few softball girls came onto the field. So I told him to hurry, and we packed his stuff up quickly and left awkwardly as the team laughed at us.

Jason immediately noticed he had a flat tire, so we had to fix that before we even left. It went pretty smoothly, and we were on our way. About 20 miles down the road, I noticed that mine were low. Upon inspection, I saw that my tires had worn almost all of the way through. We pumped it back up, and kept on our way. It was low again by the time we made it to Las Animas for lunch.

We were hoping for there to be a bike shop in either Las Animas or La Junta, but no dice. No where to buy a tire. The closest shop we found was in Alamosa, which will be our stop in two days. We called and after some frustration with the owner, I ended up talking to the shop mechanic who was very helpful. He told us he could probably order us some tires to be in by Friday afternoon, and that he would stay a bit late if we couldn't get there by 6.

At about two miles to go, my tire finally gave out, and wouldn't hold any air whatsoever. We have a hotel tonight, so Jason rode there to drop his stuff off, while I started the tire repair. The tire had a massive hole and so I patched an older one with a smaller hole. The good news if that the tire looks like it hasn't worn ALL of the way through. So there's still hope. Jason took my bags to avoid putting too much weight on the patch right now, and we rode to the hotel. The patch is holdig thus far. It only had to last about 140-150 more miles. We'll find out.

So we're getting dinner at Sonic now, and are pumped to watch a movie in our room later. It's a good thing that we have a room tonight because it looks like a massive thunder storm is about to roll through.

Tomorrow: Walsenburg, CO.