So another day in paradise...after getting up early to check the map as to where we were, somewhere near north Little Rock, we had to find a way of backtracking the miles we needed..how inconsiderate of those RV parks not to have a place for us when I needed to crash out the night before...never mind we had found our route and with a little jiggery pokery, we determined that we needed to be heading towards a little town of Brinkley, Arkansas..
Having to backtrack a little bit, I was able to take a delightful little route through some small out of the way towns, heading in a direction that I really did not know, I just went any way I fancied..I would tell Chris, ohhh just drive down there another 5 miles and lets go see what was there...unfortunately, some of the roads were in terrible conditions...and the obvious happened..my rear tire kept on getting punctured..
I have come to the conclusion that with my general body weight, even though I am much lighter after almost 3 weeks of cycling, is just too much for the rear tire to take, and to keep on going over bumpy richety roads is a problem...
Anyhow, the scenery was delightful, and Arkansas, is without question a beautiful state...but now was time to hit the road properly and get through Brinkley and beyond...
I had gently ridden the make up miles, and had changed my tire, nothing was going to stand in my way..a gallant cycle pace was in me today, with wind in my favor, it was pretty easy going heading east again towards Brinkley and the ultimate aim was towards Memphis, TN across the wide expanse of the Mississippi river...
The sun was up, it was a good day to be paying attention to fluids, it is amazing how much you drink, and how little food you desire when you are riding in the heat...the heat index must have been touching 100..high humidity and 88 degree's on my back...
We were following old route 70...it was a road that basically followed interstate 40..but with much less traffic ..or we thought...what we did not know was that there was huge construction going on the interstate..and the trucks heading west to Little Rock were coming en mass down route 70...although I had few cars following me, there was a constant stream of trucks coming in the other direction...
This would not have been a problem usually, except for the fact that the cars caught between the trucks were generally impatient, and kept on truck hopping, pulling out onto my side of the road speeding up to overtake several trucks before pulling back in...this caused me to panic several times as drivers would pull right in front of me..and I knew they could not see me with the heat haze in front of them until they were literally 50 yards in front of me..when they would obviously panic and try to avoid me....the trails of travelling down a single lane highway were very apparent...
Drivers are so impatient..and I have come to the general conclusion that truckers who live on the road know how to handle themselves with a great deal more competancy than the standard driver who thinks the road belongs to them and nobody else..
The afternoon went by without much to report in the way of incident or alarm...and infront of me I saw the sign for Brinkley...what was funny was that I was listening to Billy Joel ..and of course Billy Joel was married to Christie Brinkley...ohh how life throws these funny ironies at you...
A short stretch of 15 miles to go..Chris was there at our final checkpoint ...I loaded up with fuel, and hit the road..see you just East of Brinkley Chris ..I was off...
Chris pulled away in the RV and I was left to meander down the road for the last 15 miles or so for the day....then it happened again....and again.....twice in the space of 20 minutes, 2 flats...what on earth is going on...this route 70 was just ripping up my tubes.Was I doing something wrong, was I installing the tubes incorrectly...no, everytime I pulled the tube off to check it, low and behold, a small little hole caused by a sharp object..it was lucky I was carring the required tools in my bike pouch to fix it..
The second time I blew out, was right in front of someone's house next to the road, the older gentleman, came out to talk to me, " Its not often you see cyclists breaking down outside your house...thought I would come and check see if you are okay....How you going to fix that flat...? "
He charmingly engaged me in conversation for 10 minutes intently watching me take the wheel off and strip the tube out, replacing the tube and putting the wheel back on.." How you going to inflate that tire...you don't have no pump..."
" watch this " I told him, as I pulled out a small two inch cannister of compressed Air, stuck it over the tube and pressed, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....the tire was inflated in 3 seconds...
" Ohh my Lord, whatever will they invent next..that was so amazing..what was that.." I showed him the little steel cartridge of compressed air, where he looked at it back to front upside down, inside out...." How do they get all that air in that little shell " he said..." Do you mind if I keep it, I want to show my wife when she gets home...."
I left him with the momento of meeting a stranger on a cross country ride, with my little magical air cartridge in his possession..I was off on my travels again....
Only two miles down the richety road, it happened again...another blown rear tire...this time I was in trouble, I had just used my last cartridge..I had no way of inflating this tube a third time.not to worry..Chris was only a few miles down the road...
Meanwhile, Chris had unwittingly parked the RV in a swamp ! There I was phoning him, and my calls were going unanswered, little did I know Chris had enlisted half the Brinkley national guard into towing the RV out of his mud patch....and so was otherwise engaged...I add just a little bit of humor, but the RV did get one wheel stuck on a wet siding and was almost stuck...Chris had enlisted the help of some passers by to help him get out of the mud, so I waited patiently by a stream watching fish swim as the sun went down behing me to the west from whence I had cycled...
Forty minutes later Chris came trundling by in the RV to pick me up...Brinkley was only 3 miles further down the road...
We found the town had no RV parks, but once again, to our rescue was a Walmart ..with a big open and empty Parking lot...our home for the night....we had covered in a round about way 101 miles that sunny day, even with three blown tires, getting stuck in the mud, and battling through high humid temperatures....1769 miles ..20 days of cycling...
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