Last night was one of broken sleep, first of all we had a thunder storm with very heavy rain that lasted a couple of hours and then one of my colleagues snored most of the night and kept me awake. Having finally got back to sleep at about 3am the first zippers started going at 4.45 and woke me again.
After clearing a wet and soggy camp site we hit the road for what was supposed to be along but relatively easy 105 miles. About 20km along the way we stopped to have a look at some waterfalls and as we moved off I only got about 100m and my front tyre blew.
Upon inspection there was a large slice across the side wall and tread of the tyre so we had to change both tyre and inner tube.
I would add, for the benefit of Mrs Rogers, that at my time of crisis, you should be proud to know that your son cycled off over the horizon and didn’t even look back. He later claimed he had his ear phones on and didn’t realise I was in trouble.
The tyre change only took Randy and I 10 mins or so and then we were back on the road. Between that point and Sault St Marie there were two killer climbs, one called 1 mile hill that we had to grind up and then we had lovely 20km downhill run into town, made even better by the beeping sound from my saddle bag which told me I finally had a mobile signal.
We hit the bike shops for spare tyres and then went for a sandwich, not a dangerous thing you might think, but we managed to enter an organic sandwich shop with a couple of “toms” outside.
After catching up with Z we headed out of town expecting a gentle rolling second half to our day, sadly we were to be disappointed as Buds definition of rolling and mine are clearly different and we had 50km of some rough roads and stiff climbs which really tested us. Thankfully we got back to freeway for the last 20km or so and we were able to get into camp about 4pm .
Once the tent was up and drying I checked the bike and saw that the rear tyre also had a large slit in it with the inner tube sticking out, I had been a lucky boy to get in without that blowing as well. I spent half an hour changing tyres and now hopefully all should be well.
The camp site is beautiful, we are almost literally on the beach tonight and we are sitting her looking forward to shrimp jambalaya as the sun sets.
Tomorrow is hopefully a little gentler with only 100km to do, maybe a lie in and then some sight seeing.
Onwards and Upwards
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