Not the best of my days

I woke up early this morning to a sleeping bag soaking wet. I didn't account for the dew buildup that would happen, so that was pretty funny. It was also funny that it dried as soon as I put it in the sun. It is bone dry our here. Fletcher got up and things didn't look super good. He was having trouble with his knee again. We were breaking down camp, and I noticed that my front tire was completely flat. That wasn't a huge deal, so I spent 20 minutes fixing it up. I now had two spare tubes to get me to St. Joseph, MO. We started to bike and rode about 8 miles. I stopped to talk to a Young life parent about camping. When I finished, we decided Fletcher's knee wasn't going to hold up for the whole trip. We spent a little time trying to figure out what to do. I ended up biking back to the race track with him that was across the street from our stealth camp site.

First thing I did was go get a pulled barbecue chicken sandwich. Overpriced like crazy, but was actually incredible. It was really really good. Fletcher got plans to get back to Denver, and I talked to my mom and dad to make sure there were no projected tornadoes for me in the next three days. Tornado Alley, you know how that is.

I went off on my own again. The weather was kind of hot, and the hills were rolling. I didn't make great time that day. I stopped in a little town to get some water. A lady told me there was a spigot out back that bikers use all the time, so I rode my bike to fill up. All my water bottles full, I start to ride back to the main highway a rock's throw away. Something was certainly wrong. My tires are covered in the little things. Both tires are flat. With all the weight on the bike, this prickly thorns (which I have come to find out are everywhere in Kansas) pierced multiple spots in both tubes. So I spent an hour putting new tires on. I start riding again, and an hour later, I look down and my front tire looks like a Jelly donut (this is the phrase I gave to an almost flat tire, not quite flat, but very squishy). There was a problem with the rim tap inside my front wheel, so I was getting these slow leaks in my front tube. I pumped it up, and biked another 5 miles. Didn't feel like pumping any more, so I found a little copse of trees for the night, and set up camp. With the 3 flats for the day, I was officially out of spare tubes. I had a flat. And I only biked 46 miles for the day.

Not a great day.