PowerCycle

04/05 Made it into St. Louis! Kind of bummed that I missed the “Welcome to Missouri” sign so I’ll have to hunt for it on my way out. The rain that I thought I’d be riding with for the day never showed up and it was actually a pretty nice afternoon. Very windy though. Navigating from the East side over the Mississippi was a little crazy because of the maze of bridges. The area wasn’t in good shape either but no one bothered me. While crossing over the Eads Bridge my extra wide bike rubbed up against the wall that separates the pedestrian walkway from the road and my front panniers tore off. Good thing there were no witnesses (and I didn’t flip over into the river). My GPS also freaked out and offered a “Man Overboard?” prompt when I was taking a picture half way over the river presumably so someone could mark the coordinates for later search and rescue.

Rode up to the only open bike shop I could find on Google and had some work done. Sadly they did not have the tire I wanted so Crystal said she’d drive me up to REI if they have it. I ended up getting 2 new spare tubes, some patches (the kind that use glue), 2 Mr. Tuffy liners of which only one is installed on the rear tire and 2 more tire levers. This time I bought bright yellow ones so I don”t lose them like I have the last 6 black ones.

This morning I woke up to another flat tire. This time it looks like the frayed edges from the hole where the glass came though had worn out the tube and caused a leak. What a pain. My fancy cardboard/gum repair job to prevent something like this failed. So I repaired it with my last patch after sanding down the rough spot. I also stuck a dollar bill as suggested between the tire and the tube to act as a barrier.

While at the bike shop I also had the seat adjusted forward a little and raised up an inch. The guy there thinks that might have been causing my knee to get sore. I sure hope so. Now that I think about it it does seem like I dropped down a little from when I first bought the bike.

My couchsurfing host for the next couple nights is great. She’s also taken some of the best people/animal pictures I’ve ever seen. Even better she eats one thing at a time like I do. We went out to dinner at John D McGurks Irish Pub and had some tasty mushroom/swiss burgers and a Guinness. On the way back we cruised the nearby neighborhoods looking at some amazing old houses. We also went by an area that George Clooney just shot a scene from a new movie at. There was still a lot of fake snow all over the yards so we grabbed some to see how long it takes to biodegrade. Rabbits are apparently quite common in the area too because we spotted 3 of them.

I did take some pictures but I’m too lazy to go back upstairs and get my camera so I’ll upload them tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Leg 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.