The following morning (3-15), we
stopped in Aiken at a big hardware store and bought several different types of sleeves for
my tent pole to make at least a temporary fix. If
none of them prove long term satisfactory, I may have to order a new pole and have it
mailed “general delivery” to a post office somewhere.
The excitement of this day was Gene’s
flat tire. It wasn’t an ordinary “just
go flat” flat tire; it was a real blowout. I
was following him and it was quite audible. When
he changed the tube, we found a hole in the tube that lined up with a hole in the sidewall
of the tire. The hole in the sidewall was
about a half inch long and we decided that we had better put a patch on the tire to keep
the tube from coming out through the side. (For
you non-bicyclists, we’re talking about 85 to 90 pounds of pressure here.) Great in theory, but it didn’t work. At about 50 pounds pressure, the sidewall began to
bulge noticeably. So instead, we used my
spare tire (leftover from my first tire change in Everett, Washington last August). Real good thing that we have the same size rims.
The tire problem caused us to rethink
our route through South Carolina. We had
intended to hug the South Carolina/Georgia border, but now decided to head for Greenwood,
the nearest city big enough to have a bike shop. We
could have stopped for the day in Edgefield, but had only gone about 45 miles on the day,
so we reached consensus that we would go on to Greenwood even though it was 33 miles away
and it was already about 4:10pm. We rode
quite hard for about two hours and arrived at the south end of Greenwood just as it was
getting dark. Unfortunately, all of the
motels in Greenwood are on the east and north sides, so we had to ride through town to
find one. We got there after dark and after
about 80 miles, which is a long ride considering the rolling terrain we found in this part
of the state.
(Great
Adventures to Scenic Places)
