After a couple hard days on somewhat untrained legs, we decided to take a rest day. We slept in and made a nice breakfast. The Coy family of course scolded us for not getting up at 6:30 so that they could make it for us.

We spent the little time left remaining in the morning and worked on plans for the next couple days and figuring out where to stay for that night. We wanted to go about 10 miles up the road and set up camp at the base of the mountains. We chose a town and started calling places to see if we could camp there. There was no room at the inn...

Realizing that it was already late in the day, we decided to get there and figure it out. We loaded up our bikes and went up the hill...only to realize that David’s tire looked pretty low on air. So we stopped to look at it, a block away from where we started. While inspecting it, Aaron, someone with a track record for destroying bolts and nuts, turned the axle bolt once and heard a click, signifying they the threading of the but had completely stripped and would no longer hold the axle and dropouts in place. We found only one bicycle shop 4 miles away in the next town but it wasn’t even open on mondays. We decided to go to the Lowe’s and autozone that were a mile away to see if they could work up a solution. Aaron and David left with David on Jonatan’s bike while Jonatan stayed with the bikes and all of the bags. We showed the problem to an autozone employee and showed him the axle and original but and he was able to find one that fit. We also took washers and used them to hold the dropouts in place. We remarked on how weird of a malfunction this was and how we were fortunate we were that this was our first issue.

Happy with a quick fix, we set off back to Jonatan to fix the bikes and head on our way. We stopped at the second to last red light. It turned green and we crossed the intersection. With a pop and a lot of clanging metal, Jonatan’s bike came to a quick stop right on the other side of the crossing. We inspected the tire and found the it was indeed flat. That didn’t explain the metal clashing noise. We found that the end of a handle-less flathead screwdriver has embedded itself right in the sidewall of the tire. Because we had unloaded the bikes, we had no choice but to walk this bike back to the spot where the other bike had broken down. This left us with two broken down bikes not even a mile into our already very short day.

With two bikes down, we called our friendly bike mechanic, Ben Wyse, for advice. He affirmed the new nut and washer workaround and suggested that we move Jonatan’s bad tire to the front wheel, boot it with a folded up dollar bill (to keep the tube from poking through the hole), and riding it at a slightly lower pressure. We at least were able to keep riding.

We returned to the Coy family home and started working on each repair as they were returning from work. They continued to offer us more tools and rides and help than we wanted to accept. Eventuallly we got finished and were able to continue on our very short journey for the day up to the city of Pine Grove, CA.

We made good time covering the 10 miles and 1000 ft of climbing in a little over an hour. We stopped by the grocery store and looked to fill our supplies for dinner that night and another night of camping. While in the parking lot, we ran into Michael Flynn (not the one one associated with Trump). We talked about our journey and that we were planning on camping in pine grove. He offered his camping trailer in his backyard for the night. We happily accepted his offer because it was much better than a park or stealth camping in someone’s woods. 

While in Pine Grove, we also managed to get our first dumpster dive. Clementines, orange juice, a loaf of cheese bread, and a strawberry rhubarb pie!

We went to bed with the huge climb of Carson pass looming but also the promise of a breakfast from Sue Flynn in the morning. We had a somewhat stressful rest day but felt confident we were rested and prepared for the mountains the next day.