Day 36 First Flat and A Broken Spoke

Ninja Journaling

Bunk in Colter Bay Village (Tetons) Tent Cabins

A buck we saw on the side of the road to our Colter Bay tent site (We also saw a red fox run across the road.)

Mike fixes our first flat (caused by glass) and first broken spoke (8 miles of road construction?)

Gregory prepares the fire next to our "tireless" triple

A friendly ground squirrel snacks on a pine cone

The Tetons

Date: Aug. 24, 2009

From: Colter Bay Village in Grand Teton Natl. Park

To: Colter Bay Village in Grand Teton Natl. Park

Route: Hwy. 287/191/89

Passes:

Miles: 3 miles

Top Speed on this trip: 47.7 mph

Weather: Glorious Day!

License Plates Collected: 5 Montana plates

The 8 miles of road construction from Yellowstone to The Tetons took its toll on the bike. We had our first flat tire and a broken spoke. Fortunately our wheels have 48 spokes so Mike says we can still pedal to Lander, Wyoming where we will get a new one. The flat was caused by glass.

We were lucky that we dilly-dallied around in Colter Bay today and at around 3:00 decided we would stay another night. We had weathered a storm in the tent cabins the night before but decided to head over to the hiker-biker tent sites tonight. That is when we discovered the flat. We were glad we weren’t miles out of camp on our way over Togwotee Pass! Mike did the repairs in camp while Gregory and I collected firewood. We were also glad that fate had us at Colter Bay again because we met Devon whom we had heard about from Penny and Steve. She is cycling on her own and is a delight to be around. We had her to camp for pasta alfredo and smores and even moved her tent to our site because Gregory and I saw some pretty large scat in the woods!

After the flat was fixed we had to ride around the camp loops to find someone with a floor pump that would work with our Presta valves. We talked to about 3 campers before meeting Rosemary and her husband. Rosemary rides a Klein Pinnacle and had the pump we needed! It was luck for us too because we only had about 80 psi in the tires and needed 145 psi. Mike was able to sleep soundly.