Thursday June 19 Day 34 Malta to Glasgow, 81 miles Some Good Luck

Wow, what a day. First of all there was a strong, steady wind at my back. The land was more rolling than yesterday and on the up hills, when I was going slowly, I could often feel the wind push me ahead. Two or three times when I was rolling along the flat, unaware of the wind, I turned back to see something or pick something up and I had to struggle to go to the west. Second the road and the traffic were both as good as could be. Third, today I listened to my iPod as I was riding. You all know that I am a conservative, and one thing I have been conserving is my iPod music so that I wouldn't get tired of it. Today I gave myself a treat.

Some readers know that I wrote a book a couple years ago. It is an ABC for eighty somethings. It offers my thoughts on good and bad ways of dying. Today I refined that a little. I have said to Beth many times that if I get killed while riding my bike, she must know that I was having fun. Here's better. If I get hit while riding across the prairie of north eastern Montana, on the Hi-Line, with the wind at my back, and my buds in my ears, listening to Pavarotti, know that I was near my bliss point.

Update from yesterday:
there were no itchy spots from yesterday's mosquitoes and though there were a bunch of trains rumbling through all night long, none was able to keep me from my slumber.

So today went great until mid afternoon when I thought I would be arriving in Glasgow by mid afternoon. I was cruising down a hill when the bike began to wobble in a queer way. I applied the brakes and wondered what was up. Then I realized I had another flat. You may think this was an unlucky event, but consider this. In all my ride across Montana, I have seen only two rest areas and the second one was about 40 feet from where my tire went flat. What are the odds. In fact this was extremely good luck. It meant there was shade, a place off the highway, a picnic table to put my stuff on and a rest room to clean up in. So you see I was in fact, very lucky, even more than you yet know.

After you take off the tire and extract the tube from rim you must then find the puncture. This can be difficult. I knew my hole was small because the leak was quite slow. The guy who taught me how to patch bike tires said that if you just keep pumping air into the tube, the hole will eventually reveal itself. Last summer I finally decided to test that assertion when I had a tube with a leak that I could not find. I just kept pumping air into it and looking for the hole to open up, when suddenly the whole thing burst. Since I had no spare tube with me today due to the flat two days ago, I could not afford to blow it to smithereens. (What is a smithereen anyway?). The other method of finding a leak is to inflate the tube and then submerge it in water. The rising bubbles reveal the leaking point. I took the pressurized tire to the men's room, but found that the sink did not have a stopper. I would have folded up a paper towel and stopped the bowl, but the hand dryer was a hot air blower of the kind with three step instructions: 1 push the button, 2 rub hands together in the hot air 3. Rub hands on your pants. There was only one way to find the leak and you can guess what that was. Did I do it? Yes of course. There was no alternative. I did however flush first. Once the hole was identified I proceeded to patch it in the usual way, but with great care, since I had only one patch, having forgotten to get a new patch kit at the last two bike shops I've been in. I pumped the tire, reloaded the bike and with some apprehension started on the last ten miles.

If you come to Seattle by ferry or other boat you have a very nice view of the harbor and skyline as you arrive. If you fly in at dusk on a clear day you may get a view of our mountain and then the water and islands of the Sound and finally the city lights. It's very pretty. If you are driving across the high plain of Bolivia on your way to La Paz and night has fallen you will be bewildered by the absence of any sign of a large city. You will think, "I know it's the third world, but don't they even have street lights." Then suddenly you will find yourself at the edge of a great basin and there below will be the lights of a metropolis. It is a great entry. If you ride a bike across the Hi-Line from the west toward Glasgow, and it's the end of the day and you are tired, you might be looking for a sign that the town is near. You will reach a point of ground a little above the rest and there just on the horizon will be the first thing to see when approaching a prairie town, the water tower. I've heard that standing on the deck of a sailboat the distance to the horizon that one can see is seven miles. Seldom do you see that far on land, but coming into Glasgow I figured I could see the water tower from about eight miles. This too is a great entry.

Good night my friends. Tomorrow is another day, with another piece of a long, but dandy road.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T