Hello from the hippie capital of British Columbia! And no, I'm not joking. The town of Nelson is a really scenic place but it does remind me a lot of Boulder, CO. You have a lot of well-to-do looking people and a lot of people that probably haven't showered in a while. Adds to the character of the town, I guess.
Today was quite the adventure. Before all that started I had one of the most delicious breakfasts I've ever had and I'm still not sure how I ate all of it. Julie at the Blue Moon Bed & Breakfast had homemade granola with organic yogurt and fresh fruit drizzled with maple syrup for the first course. A few cold cuts with different varieties of cheese followed (and honey and toast) and then an omelette with tomatoes and fresh basil from her garden and brie cheese (I think). Oh, and bacon. Pretty amazing breakfast! I talked with Julie and Stefan for a while afterwards and then was off on my ride for the day. Here's the route I took:
Julie and Stefan took a few pictures of me in front of their sign for their website and then I was off.
As I got two or three kilometers into my ride I was going up a hill and thought it was more of a challenge than it should have been. When you ride with weight on your bike for hundreds of miles you get a sense of how much effort a hill should take. Sure enough...flat tire. Same one that was flat last night as I got into Slocan. I brought two spare tubes with me and I changed the back tire using spare tube #2.
Before I took the old tube out of the tire I put a little air in it to see where the leak was coming from. I saw what the culprit was and immediately got angry with msyelf for making a rookie mistake. I forgot to inspect the tire before I put the tube in the night before. The tires I have on this bike are flat-resistant. They have a foam layer around the circumference of the tire that will absorb a puncture as large as a thumbtack without affecting the tube inside. What I found was a staple about a half inch long that had just barely pierced through the other side and had punctured both tubes. I took that out and looked around the rest of the tire and saw another small piece of a staple in the tire as well. It didn't make it through but I removed it.
After looking around the inside and outside of the tire what felt like 20 times I put the new tube on and was off. Want to raise your blood pressure? Go through your last tube in an area with zero cell service (the only dead area of the trip so far) with the nearest bike shop 45 miles away. I rode the rest of the day paranoid about every rock, bump, speck of glass, etc. But I made it into Nelson and there are four or five bike shops in this town. There was a rail trail I had planned on riding today but I didn't because it was riskier to ride on that surface without a spare. I did ride on a backroad Dan (one of the people I ran into yesterday) suggested but he must not have ridden the entire route because a few miles were gravel. Perfect!
The photos today will be different than other days. I'm out of the mountain lakes but rode next to the Slocan and Kootenay rivers most of the day.
I walked my bike over this bridge. There were a few nails sticking up.
Off day tomorrow! I'm golfing at Granite Pointe Golf Club and am really excited for that. Should be a fun town to explore!
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