May 14, 2019
Day 20 Kure Beach, NC
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We had an enjoyable ride to Kure Beach. We stopped in the town of Southport to visit the local history museum and a North Carolina Maritime Museum. Southport is a very pretty waterfront town.
I didn't take any pictures at the museums, but they were interesting. We left Southport by way of a ferry across the Cape Fear River to Fort Fisher. There was a large group of local cyclists on board.
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When we rode off the ferry at Fort Fisher, our rear tire was reading 63 psi - Kerry will tell the rest of that story. - Jeanna
Jeanna showed you photos of bicycles on the ferry, but she didn't show you a photo of all the motorcycles. There were more than a dozen motorcycles on the ferry - all guys and all from either VA or NY. Two days ago at our motel in Myrtle Beach, the place was overrun with motorcycles. Most of those bikes belonged to couples and they were from Ontario. Turns out that it was Bike Week in Myrtle Beach while we were there.
I talked to folks from both groups and leaned that no one had actually ridden to the event, they all had trailered their bikes. I guess they didn't want to get all that chrome dirty!
Our tour of forts continued today. Fort Fisher was built to protect the mouth of the Cape Fear River and Wilmington, NC during the Civil War. There was a very interesting (to me) narrative and display of the battle when the Union forces finally captured the fort.
What really struck me was how different Fort Fisher was from other forts from the same era. They used over 25 million bricks to build Fort Pulaski in Savannah, and the newly developed rifled cannon pulverized it in less than 30 hours. Fort Fisher was built using sand (lots of sand!!) and the rifled cannon were pretty much ineffective against it. Although it was bombarded by Union warships, they did little damage - the fort was captured when Union soldiers over-ran it.
The construction of Fort Fisher also impressed me. Thee entire fort was built by soldiers and slaves using shovels and wheelbarrows. The men pushing the wheelbarrows never stopped - they just walked past a line of men who threw shovels of sand into the barrow. Sort of like a human assembly line!
Why our all our flats on the rear??
As Jeanna mentioned, when we were leaving the ferry, we noticed that our rear tire was low but the pressure was dropping very slowly, so slow in fact, that I thought the problem might be the valve instead of a puncture. Soon after we left the ferry, I pumped the tire up and we rode about another mile to the Fort Fisher historical site. I had planned to change the tire after we had toured the fort, but when when we were ready to leave, the pressure had only dropped to 50 psi. Being our motel was only 2 miles away, I pumped the tire up again and we rode like hell to get to the motel, because I really didn't want to change a flat on the side of the road.
Once in our room, I checked the valve for leakage, but there was none and when I pumped the tube up I could not find a leak. This puzzled me because our previous flats had acted the same way - very slow leaks. Only after putting the tube in water, did I find the leak and it was not really a puncture, it was more like an abrasion. Upon close inspection of the inside of the tire, I noticed that we had a very small cut in the tire - less than 1/8". Apparently, this cut was opening and closing and slowly nibbling away at the tube.
I now believe that our previous flats were caused the same way and, by inserting a tire boot over the cut, the issue has been resolved. - Kerry
Today's ride: 37 miles (60 km)
Total: 697 miles (1,122 km)
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