Over the past few days we watched Taming of the Shrew at Oregon’s famous Shakespeare festival, sandboarded down dunes (similar to snowboarding without the snow), camped on the beach, and climbed a mountain road called Seven Devils. Today, however, the real adventures began.

Working our way towards the California border in southwest Oregon, today’s destination was Brookings, OR. After an evening food stop in Gold Beach - about 25 miles and a large, undulating climb away from Brookings - the three of us split and decided to meet at the first peak three miles away. I was the last to depart at around 5:30, just minutes behind the other two. A mile out of Gold Beach I got a flat. As I stopped to fix it, I noticed that it had happened conveniently at a road turnoff facing the gorgeous ocean and the setting sun. I began work on the bike happily, enjoying the serendipity of it all.

I had run over a 2-inch nail that had fully embedded itself in my tire. I pried it out and replaced the tube while chatting with a few locals walking their dogs. A few days earlier, I had bought a new pump (having not brought one originally) that was lightweight but put pressure on the valve stem and required great care to use effectively. As I began to pump the new tube, the stem ripped off leaving me with another flat. That was my only spare. I decided to blow up the tube I had put a nail through to assess its patch-ability. In the process, I ripped that stem off too. A broken stem is nearly impossible to fix.

I was starting to forget about the sunset. Conveniently, I had saved a tube from Seattle that had a slow leak. I installed that tube and reloaded my bike. It seemed to be holding air. By that time I had been toiling for about 45 minutes, and the boys were surely wondering what happened to me. I called them both, but neither had cell reception on top of the hill. I began to ride, carefully, to catch up in what was now dusk. About a mile up the hill, the tube from Seattle was leaking again! I decided not to worry and figured I could keep pumping this slow-leak tube to climb the hill and borrow a new tube from either Jason or Dmitry. But when I stopped to add air as it became too deflated to ride on, I broke a third stem. At this point, I was beside myself with frustration. I began to walk my 80-pound bike with a flat uphill, but I soon realized it would be completely dark by the time I hiked the remaining 2.5 miles. So I locked the bike bike to a guard rail and began running uphill.

It suddenly occured to me that I was merely assuming that the boys were waiting for me atop the hill. If they had decided to descend while they still had daylight, I’d never reach them by foot. But knowing that my only other option was to carry my broken bike back to Gold Beach, get a motel room (Dmitry was carrying my tent poles), and wait for a bike shop to open in the morning (if there was one), I kept running with hope.

As I reached the top I called out to them through the dense trees. They soon emerged, curious about my delay. “Code Red” was the only explanation I could offer. Fortunately, Dmitry had one spare tube that would fit my bike. He and I biked back down the hill to fix it as Jason volunteered to walk. As we found my bike, it was officially night and we used our headlights to quickly replace the tube. At this point all we could think about was the 25 miles of mostly uphill still between us and Brookings. Just as we finished the repair, a truck pulled up. The driver was a fellow cyclist, Eric, who wanted to be sure everything was okay. We assured him we were set and he nearly left. Just as he grabbed his door handle (and at the same moment Jason arrived), I put a bag back on my bike and - BANG! The new tube exploded. I had destroyed four tubes in two hours. I shrugged my shoulders and we graciously accepted Eric’s offer to drive us to Brookings. He had been driving the opposite direction on his way to Portland, but he didn’t think twice about backtracking to take us to Brookings.

As we sat in the back seat of Eric’s truck flying effortlessly over the 25 miles of hill, Jason and Dmitry chatted with Eric about his insane cycling adventures. I was mostly quiet, wondering how on this most unfortunate of evenings a savior had found us at the perfect moment. I reached Brookings exasperated but smiling from deep within.

And I’ve resolved to purchase a new pump.

Posted on September 17th, 2007 by Derrick
Filed under: Uncategorized