DEAR BICYCLE GODS

Thank you for the beautiful start to today.  That 20 miles of downhill, and the accompanying tailwind, were a truly marvelous way to begin today's ride.  And the serenity and solitude of the campsite was great too.

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Also much appreciated is the long stretch of fine weather with which you've seen fit to bless me on my journey.  I deeply appreciate it, and am duly grateful.

You've been kind enough to look after me, sending me road angels when and as I needed them.  It's been said that God looks after drunks, fools, and little children; I'm sober and have long since passed from childhood so you can do the math and draw your own conclusions.

Taffy, Katherine, and Ben were your great gift to me today, and for their support, assistance, and encouragement I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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In fact, thank you for the entire Pathfinders group that passed me today, as I sat stranded on the Weiser River Trail five miles upstream from Cambridge.  It would have been a wholly different experience for me, had you not sent them my way when you did.

But, and this is my earnest plea, could you please dial back on the tire shenanigans and general drama for at least a little while?  It's one thing to get punctures every now and again, but having six of them in four days seems excessive to me.

Also, while we're on the subject of tires, was it really necessary to cause the bead of my rear tire to fail and blow out the inner tube?  (In fact, TWO inner tubes, since I didn't immediately diagnose the reason for the initial explosion.)

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The Weiser River Trail is very nice, and I was enjoying the solitude (not to mention not having to be on the busy, narrow, shoulderless two-lane US 95) on my way to the USFS Evergreen campground a ways up the road, but to have a catastrophic equipment failure that rendered the bike not merely unrideable but in fact immobile was not really called for, was it?

I will at least give thanks that you chose a time and place where I was riding slowly, rather than the stretch where I was doing 35 mph down the hill into Cambridge.  A failure at that moment could easily have had incredibly severe consequences.

The Pathfinders graciously dismounted a tire from one of their bikes and sent it back up the trail to me, catching me about two miles from where I had secured the bike next to a trail gate and started walking back to town to try and organize a retrieval via the local Sheriff's Department.  Having a tire in hand enabled me to walk the two miles back to the bike and set about putting the substitute in place.

Your little prank of putting two more punctures in my third inner tube of the day was well-played, but Katherine was onto your tricks and suggested that I dunk the tube in the river to find them.  The streams of bubbles revealed all, and your wily scheme to frustrate me further didn't work.

Thank you for keeping Taffy and Katherine and Ben with me on the journey back to Cambridge.  Please look after Taffy in particular, as she struggles to come to terms with the recent loss of her mother (age 102 and still running her own farm right to the end).

The incident with the bears was simultaneously exhilarating and scary.  How did you manage to time it so that mama bear and her two cubs chose to scamper across the trail, just ten feet in front of Ben?  Thank you for keeping him safe and for giving him the knowledge to drop his bike where he was and back away from the danger.  We all hooted and hollered and made as much noise as we could, so as not to startle Mama Bear as we passed the spot where we'd seen her. 

Finally, thank you for the Frontier Motel and RV Park here in Cambridge.  My campsite on their back lawn is quite pleasant, and the owner / host has been very kind to me.  He's given me a giant bucket of ice so that I can have cold water to drink after my seven hour ordeal on the trail.

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Now I'm clean and dry and fed and the world is settling down for the night.  Tomorrow will be another day, and with it will come a fresh perspective on the situation.  Until then, I'm going to sleep the sleep of the dead, I think.  Good night.

Consecutive days without a tire problem: 0