Day 30: Lexington to Gibbon

Posted by: Arin

This day was my most frustrating of the trip so far. The night before I had been too tired to fix my slow leak so the day started with flat repair. I took my time putting on the patch, making sure it was on perfectly. It looked beautiful and after pumping up my tire we hit the road.

One hundred feet later we heard a hiss of air as Brad's tire went flat. We fixed that and continued on for another seven or eight miles. There we stopped at a little gas station/auto shop to fill our water bottles. I was anxious to get riding again but as I lifted my bike from the wall, I saw that my rear tire was low. This was absolutely ridiculous. I took the wheel off to find the hole, which turned out to be immensely difficult. I took the tube into the bathroom only to find my patch was slowly leaking. I decided to rip off the old patch so that I could try an instant patch rather than the vulcanized ones I had been using. 

*side note* Every single patch from the patch kit I bought in North Platte has failed.

As I'm tearing the patch off I hear another weird hissing noise as my front tire rapidly lost all of its air. Great, now I had a box full of faulty patches and two flats, and the closest place to buy tubes was a walmart in Lexington 7 miles back. As I'm sitting there hopelessly, the lady working in the gas station comes out. She asked me if I was having some issues and I told her the situation. "I have a mechanic back in Lexington who can grab you some tubes when he comes back" she told me. The day was saved! After about an hour of waiting, a guy comes with three tubes. I then proceeded to pay $31.60. That felt a little harsh, but I had tubes!

I pulled the first one out of its box... And the valve was too short. No pump was going to be able to clamp on. Luckily, a few weeks before the trip I saw a YouTube video that showed how to make a presta valve adapter out of a presta valve cap and I was able to pump up my tires using the air compressor! I just wouldn't be able to pump up my tires again until I got new tubes. Anyways, this mechanic saved my day. Thanks Bobby!

While we were waiting, we met another interesting guy. He was a farmer who had been living in the same house in the area for 50 years! He was super stoked to hear about our journey and shared a story of his own. Back in the 70's, he drove a tractor all the way from Nebraska to Washington D.C. to protest the high cost of farms. He was with farmers all over the country who made the journey, driving ten hours a day at 10 mph. By the time they got to Washington, they had a line of tractors over ten miles long! He was really great guy who genuinely wanted to keep in touch with us and even bought us some cookies!

Once I got the flats fixed, we got on the road and rode all the way to Gibbon. As we approached town, it was starting to get dark and we saw a heavily wooded area off to the side. We went in to see if it would be a good place to sleep, but there were some pretty sketchy looking plants and bugs so we got out of there quickly. We got into town and saw lightning in the distance. Rain seemed like a possibility, so we gave up being hidden to get a roof in a park. There we made dinner and slept under some concrete tables, using the footprint of the tent over the bikes as a wind screen. Although the lightning continued late into the night, we avoided rain and slept peacefully.