Trip | punaise

8 September 2015 20:25

Phew! I finally arrived. 8km after my previous post, I felt something weird in my front wheel, and stopped.

I saw a small puddle mud form, and when I inspected from closer, I saw my tire was totally flat.

Some friendly (but mocking me for not having any backup tires with me) cyclists stopped, and wanted to help, but without a new tire or a repair kit, not a lot could be done. At that point I noticed the problem was (and could only be, my tires are resistant to other types of punctures thanks to the Kevlar lining in the outer tube) a white punaise (thumb-tack). They said I should take a look at the garage, exactly 5m parallel from the place I stood.

Unfortunately there was a steep hill and no road to that side, but it was only 100m to the nearest exit. After checking in the gas station and the garage, there was nothing they could do.

Then I went back and asked a guy in a Peugeot-overall if he could help me. As by a miracle he could. Unfortunately after trying three of his patches, none of them stayed properly. The last one he put on stayed not terrible, but because I still had a lot to ride, he advised to to back to Beaumont (8km) and have it fixed there.

I went there and back, and then still had 30km to do to the house. Unfortunately when I ‘arrived’, I found out that there are two streets with the same name in Viroinval, but 13km apart.

I took the for now worst road to the real place, very bad road conditions, lots of going up. I ate by the side of the road at 18:30 because I really couldn’t wait longer. I arrived at 20:05.

I’m very happy I arrived before dark (by however small margin), because that and maybe rain could’ve gone more wrong. Now I’m very tired so I will not do anything anymore.

In total that came to 145km today.

Good night!