Today our bike ride was from Kellogg, ID to Thompson Falls, MT, which was 72 miles. Every morning we circle up and talk about the days events. It’s when we find out how many miles we have for the day, when our rake point is, where our sponsored lunch and dinner is, and if we have any friendship visits or any other activities. Also every day we do a disability of the day where someone researchers a disability and informs the group about it and we do a dedication for the day where we dedicate the ride for the day to someone that one of us knows. Today we were able to dedicate the days ride to my Uncle Rich. Like stated in previous blogs he had a stroke about two years ago and is now a person living with a disability. So we said a little prayer for the day and us and Rich and his family and then we all keep him in our thoughts while we bike. This makes us push ourselves knowing that there is someone out there that would love to take our place and that the tiredness or soreness we feel is not that big of a deal when looking at the whole picture. It was really awesome that I was able to make the dedication today for him. Today we not only entered into our 3rd state which was Montana we also were able to switch from Pacific Time Zone to the Mountain Time Zone, which brought our time zone closer to the time zone back at home! Other than that the ride consisted of two mountain pass climbs. One pass was about 4 miles long and the other one was 6 miles long. They were pretty tough but still nothing compared to the two mountain passes that we had to climb on day 2. After getting up the first mountain pass we stopped and took a break at the top of it before descending down. While up there we took pictures of the great viewpoint we had. As we were descending down the hill we were going around this curve when this loud bang happened! It sounded like a gun shooting and it made us all jump. It turned out to be my tire popping while I was going 25 MPH. It was a little scary and I almost wrecked and was able to stop before falling. I changed it just for it to pop again. So we had to walk up to a van to get a new tube and the pump so I could change it again. Then we started going down the hill and around the same corner where it popped the first time and it popped again!! Trying not to get frustrated I just stopped and changed the tire for the third time! Then we got going again and made it about ¼ of a mile before it popped for the fourth time. Not wanting to give up and rack my bike I searched over my bike looking for the problem to find out that my brake was pinching the tire every time I tried to brake. So we adjusted my brakes changed my tire and I was on my way again but for the rest of the ride I didn’t use my front brakes to avoid getting another flat!! We got up the second pass in about an hour and then we went downhill for about 20 mills before we got racked to go to lodging. Since it took an hour and fifteen minutes to fix my bike we had to rack to lodging so we wouldn’t be late for our sponsored meal. I missed out on only 10 miles but this was the first day that I didn’t do all the miles. It was disappointing but alright because it wasn’t me racking myself and it was due to timing issues. As long as I can keep pushing through and not give into the pain and tiredness and rack myself I will be happy. But so far so good but I have two months to go!! Other than the bike issues the ride was amazing and we had beautiful scenery.
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