Most people would likely characterize me as an optimist, but I consider myself more of realist, which I define as “an optimist with experience”. Realistically speaking, I expected this last week of riding to be challenging. My route would be following the rivers from Idaho to Washington to Oregon in areas known for wind, heat, rain plus the potential threat of forest fires and smoke. But, man, I hit other factors. For starters, I spent quite a bit of time on that winding Route 12, which had been so beautiful until running into a trucks galore. On top of that, these areas are littered with a thorny invasive weed called “goatheads”, which puncture through bike tires. To add insult to injury, I had to swerve around piles of yellow onions in a number of places, presumably from falling off one of the big, bad delivery trucks. I’m not discriminating and hate raw onions of all colors; white, red, yellow, doesn’t matter, hate them all. By the time I got to Walla Walla late in the day, my “new” back tire just installed in Bozeman was too worse for wear. I was able to get to the awesome Allegro Cycling shop for help from the owner Michael right before closing time. Today brought a new tire and more “experience” as a realist.
