Day 72 - Friday November 13th

Van Damme SP, CA to Salt Point SP, CA
68.21 miles
5:09.50 hrs
42.9 max
13.2 avg

Another broken spoke! And I have the tooling to fix it! DUN DuN dun! Friday the 13th lingers around my head as I think about potentially horrid things could happen during today's travels. I made it a point to only let these thoughts into my head early on in the day and to forget about them immediately after. The problem with making a point of something like that is that the more you try and forget, the more you think about them. So, I failed miserably!

With all the hype of Friday the 13th my day was exceptionally pleasant! Unfortunately, it was not a pleasant day for another biker that I met along the way. Dave was his name. I ran into him around noon as I came over a hill to find him with his panniers removed and brand new bike upside-down on the side of the road. Of course, I when I approached him I asked if everything was all right and he explained how he had a bent rim. He was going to try and ride to the next city with a bike shop and I thought that I should probably take a look at his bike before he left. I, on one hand, do have quite a bit of experience with truing wheels, broken rims and broken spokes. I offered to look at the bike for him and he was happy to have what he called a "personal roadside mechanic". After inspection, his spokes were SOO loose! No wonder he bent it! I then set to work truing the wheel to the best of my ability. My goal was not to make it perfect, but make it as true as possible so that he could have a safe ride into the next bike shop to get it looked at by a professional. I was very happy with the my results and would have felt comfortable riding away on the wheel myself. I was a little worried that the wheel was no longer concentric and had a little lump in it but that was not something that I felt like I could fix. Dave was very happy to be on his way but not before we exchanged information. I look forward to hearing about how the rest of his trip went when he finishes. Hopefully he didn't have any more issues with the wheel and it held up till he was able to get it checked out!

Even though this occurrence took up a decent chunk of time out of my day I still managed to get in a decent amount of mileage and talked to numerous people during the day who all seemed eager to donate to my cause. It did prevent me, however, from getting to the SP that I wanted to camp at that night. My only option was a SP that was VERY full and did not have hiker/biker sites. There was another campground just 1/4 mile down the road with h/b sites, but thanks to Arnold (CA gov.) it had been closed. As I slowly cycled around the nearly full campground, looking for a place to possibly pitch my tent, a woman walking the opposite direction that I was moving said, "You can stay at our camp site if you like". Without much anticipation I accepted the invite and she accompanied me back to where I would end up pitching tent. This night was probably one of the most enjoyable nights I had thus far. I ended up meeting 6 lovely people (who were all avid cyclists) and we exchanged stories about cycling adventures over an adult beverage of choice. It was truly an enjoyable night!

Overall, one hell of a day (in a good way)!