I left Lame Deer about 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 27th. It was my 55th birthday and the 34th birthday of my lovely daughter Heather. I was out of cell phone range most of the day. It was another grueling cycling day with just a few occurrences to mention.
In Ashland, a tiny little community between Lame Deer and Broadus, and right outside Cheyenne territory, I stopped for a little break. I met Johnny and Stephanie, two friends who love to hike, backpack, and just be out doors. “Nature” is what they loved. Johnny is from Sacramento, California and was visiting Stephanie and her husband for some outdoor adventures and friendship fun. Stephanie loves her home in Sheridan, a fairly sizable town on I-90. But, here they were on hwy 212??? Apparently, there is about 20 miles of hardpacked dirt road from Sheridan to Ashland and they planned on hiking in the local area. True, it is very beautiful in the hills in the Cheyenne Territory and surrounding.
Stephanie talked to me about whitewater rafting and kayaking and was very familiar with southern Colorado and norther New Mexico waterways. She had me thirsting for a streamlined kayak on a swift river on a hot day.
They wished me safe travels and HD and I again hit the road. We hadn’t gone far when we hit major construction with about 2 miles of dirt where the hwy used to be. Traffic was siphoned to a single lane with crewmen letting one stream of vehicles go by at a time. The foreman decided it was too dangerous as well as time consuming to let me go through, so he popped HD into his pickup, with me holding onto my beloved trike to prevent it rolling off the back of the truck. So we got a birthday ride through the construction zone- a dirt road reprieve up some impossibly steep hills. Happy Birthday!! Yay!
We pulled into Broadus, my last overnite town in Montana. I was dirty, grimy, sweaty, and hungry. And I wanted to eat alot for my birthday! LOL! So, I checked into the small, bare bones motel room, walked to the single grocery store, and picked up way too much food. I bought a package of fresh made brownies for my birthday cake and left most of them for the housekeeper the next morning. I had salad and fruit and chips and cheese. The following morning, I did my best to shove the rest of the fruit, chips, cheese, and no bake cookies into the food area designated in Henry David’s cargo area. And several bottles of water.
My front tire was about flat. But, I pumped it up and it seemed to hold so I decided to try my luck getting to Rapid City as I planned on serious cycle maintenance and thought I might need new outer tires. Every 20-30 miles I needed to refill but the innertube did alright.
THAT tire did ok, anyway. About 20 miles from Alzada, a tiny town near the Montana/Wyoming border, and the ONLY town until Belle Fourche, South Dakota, I sensed a sudden slowing of HD’s speed. I looked back and noted the right rear tire was flat. Doggone it! I admit I had been anxious about this day as the mileage would be over 95 and there was nothing between Broadus and Belle Fourche except Alzada, which listed no services on the internet. I was getting worried about hyperthermia as the road was hot and there were no trees to provide shade relief. I was in the higher plains, with gently rolling grasslands. Every rest break had been brief, walking on hot ground with unrelenting sunshine. Would I have enough water? I was drinking often but sweating it off as rapidly as I could get it in. Uh oh.
Nothing to do but address the potential emergency situation. I stopped, pulled the tire off the frame and tried to let out the rest of the air. No go. I tried to get the tire off the rim but could not do it with that much air pressure. I tried refilling the tire, but I could hear the air escape and the pressure would not hold. I tried again and again to release the air, but no luck. First, I cussed a bit. Actually, very little, surprising myself! Then I said to myself, “You know something good is going to come of this. It always does”. Right about then, a working man in a pickup, going the other way, stopped and asked if I needed help. I explained the situation and he took a set of pliers and also attempted what I had been doing. No luck.
So, Rich Huber, who was driving the company truck (he is a pipefitter), offered to take HD and I into Alzada so we could ask the ladies at the cafe about the local mechanic talent. I was surprised to hear that there was a cafe, because larger towns than Alzada didn’t have any type of convenience store or cafe along the highways in Montana. So, off we went to Alzada. It was high noon and the heat was up. He sped along the highway, again without HD tethered, so I hung on to HD’s frame with one hand, wedged one foot underneath the left rear tire, and held onto the side of the truck with the other hand. The wind was delightful, cooling me off, although my hair took quite a beating at 60 mph in the back of that pickup!!
The ladies at the cafe pointed us to an auto and tire repair shop “next door”, several hundred feet away. The owner-mechanic, Dan, was not there at the moment, but his wife Carol was holding down the fort, as well as “Paul”, a seasoned auto body man and mechanic who was working on body repair that day. He pulled out a tire core removal tool, popped out the valve core, let out the air, and changed the tire for me. Yay!! He wouldn’t charge me anything but wanted to take a photo of the cycle, laughing to himself saying it had been decades since he worked on a pedal powered bike.
I cycled back to the cafe/convenience store, picked up a soda and an ice cream, and finished cooling off. The event had taken 2 hours total, but saved me 20 miles of road in the hottest part of the day. So, I cycled into Belle Fourche, with 75 miles under me, arriving late in the day. I checked into a little motel on a side street--the Ace Motel, and spent a great night making inroads into my groceries from Broadus and recharging the electronics.
Funny how things work out!!
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