Allan and Dave left early for Bagley, about 20 miles east, for an interview about their trip and special olympics. We were a bit more leisurely and packed up, then stopped at a cafe for breakfast. Today was sunny but cool, with rolling hills, the wind at our backs, and there are definitely more trees. It’s an ideal riding day. We stopped in Beminji for a break, had a yogurt and juice from Market Place Grocery, then rode on. We thought we might make it about 20 more miles. Did I mention Randy is making an alcohol stove? Then we can have 2 stoves. It’s made out of a beer can and is quite elegant. Anyway, Randy stopped at the Bemidji co-op to buy alcohol for his stove. That’s when we discovered the 5th flat. Ed, the manager of the co-op was talking to us when we discovered the flat and offered a garage area for us to fix it. Ed was great, gave us water, use of the compressed air, and directions to a bike shop. After fixing the flat, we rode to the bike shop to buy a new tube and a new tire. The old tire was completely worn through. After that we decided it was getting late enough that maybe we should stay in Beminji. Beminji, we found out, is the home of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, and has a lot more options for food than our original destination. We had a very nice dinner at the Irish Pub. While there we met a nice woman and her family. Her name is Suzy and she’s an online teacher for bluesky. She told us about a China trip she took and an awesome walking tour, Inn to Inn in Spain, as we left the restaurant we discovered another flat. Randy fixed that on the sidewalk, pumped it up with a CO2 cartridge and we decided to call it a day. We were staying about where we had stopped at 2:00 this afternoon. When we got to the motel we tried to check the tire tube but the ToPeak Road Morph pump won’t work, it won’t pump air.
Greg